Schlagwortarchiv für: Mandat Consulting Group

Cultural Differences – Singapore Airlines vs. Frankfurt Airport Staff

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Most people who know me know that I am a great fan of Singapore Airlines and I try to use them as often as possible. Here is another example of the difference their employees make in regard to their contribution to the reputation of their company:

We landed in Frankurt after a most enjoyable trip from New York JFK returning from a fabulous week with members of the Million Dollar Consultant® Hall of Fame. I picked up our luggage from the conveyor belt to recognize that one of our bags was seriously damaged: One wheel of the bag was missing and zippers were missing, too.

The lady of Singapore ground staff whom I showed the bag said immediately “We take care of that.“ Unfortunately “We“ was not only her, but also two ladies from Frankfurt Airport.

The conversation that followed was mainly characterized by formal questions of the Frankfurt Airport ladies who were lead through a computerized process. Here are some of the questions they asked me:

• “Can I have your boarding pass, please?“ – Me: “Of course.“
• “The one of your wife as well, please.“ – Me: “Why? It is my bag that has been damaged.“
• “Which flight number was it?“ – Me: “Look at the boarding pass!“
• “What class did you fly?“ – “We flew First Class. Why don’t you look at the boarding pass you just asked me for?“
• “Do you have a baggage insurance?” – “I have no idea! Why do you need to know that?“
• “How old is the bag and what did it cost?“ – “Do you want to fool me?“

The lady of Singapore ground staff of course recognized my being really unhappy and told their airport colleagues to just fill out the form in order to help us leaving the airport. Unfortunately she wasn’t permitted to work herself on the computer.

While the Frankfurt Airport ladies still were very busy with the computer, the Singapore Airlines employee said the following: “You have two options: Option one is that you go to the Airport Baggage Service in order to see if they can repair the bag here or—what I recommend since I can imagine that you just want to get home now—you can call us to pick up the bag at your home or your office and we repair it or we send you the money for a new one.“ She was empathetic and I was happy.

This happened while the two other ladies were still fighting with their computer and with me, their customer.

It makes a difference how you approach your customers and clients. If you really want your business to grow, you need employees in every single department at every single position who have your customer’s best interest in mind.

Is this difficult? Sure, it is. But it is possible and some companies—like Singapore Airlines—are very close to that. Some companies—like Frankfurt Airport—will probably never get even to the undergraduate level. Ever.

Yours,
Guido Quelle

PS: This blogpost also appeared on Dr. Alan Weiss’s blog www.contrarianconsulting.com

(c) 2012, Prof. Dr. Guido Quelle, Mandat Consulting Group

The Seven Most Effective Strategies To Impede Growth

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Just in time for the start of your week: Don’t let anybody stop you growing.

There are myriad ways people are trying to impede growth, because to grow means to change. Take a look at the dark side of growth now: Here are the seven most effective strategies to impede or even to slow down growth, because growing makes a lot of people feel uncomfortable.

• Making everything top priority
• Endless safeguarding
• Pursuing a personal agenda
• Throwing smoke grenades
• Noncommittal behavior
• Creating project inflation
• Questioning successes

Did you face one of these strategies in your company? How do you deal with them? How do you take care, that your company grows, though? For each of these strategies there are one or more counter strategies. The point is, that you are able to realize that someone tries to stop you from growing your firm.

Yours,
Guido Quelle

(c) 2012, Prof. Dr. Guido Quelle, Mandat Consulting Group

Self-Growth: An Apple A Day Keeps The Doctor Away – Yes, And …

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We all know the phrase “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” What originally was meant to express that a healthy life is based on a healthy nutrition, turned to a metaphor for becoming succesful by doing something repeatedly and consistently.

There are three things to consider, because otherwise wrong expectations are being caused:

#1 It is not the first apple that saves your life. In other words: As you can’t expect lifelong health by eating the first apple, you can’t expect to be successful just because you started doing something right, for example working on the personal growth strategy rather than wasting time on Facebook. You need to do the right things repeatedly and consistently. This often means that you need to change not only your mindset, but your behavior, yes, your life.

#2 You need to spend some time to define, what “the right things” are for you. It isn’t necessarily the first apple you see that’s good for you – metaphorically spoken. Invest at least some time to identify what “the apple” is for you and what kind of apples the most tasteful ones are.

#3 Start. It’s far better to start by doing some things right than to start a lifelong thinking process. Get yourself some apples and start with them. Don’t bring a van full of apples home from running your daily errands, a small basket is enough since the apples need to be fresh. Focus on a small number of changes.

Be patient. Once you defined the right areas and the right ways to grow personally, you need the discipline to take action every single day. Trust yourself and trust the quality of your decisions. You can always change the course once you gained momentum.

Yours,
Guido Quelle

(c) 2012, Prof. Dr. Guido Quelle, Mandat Consulting Group

Crisis? What Crisis?

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We are currently in London for our consultants meeting where we are working on internal development and on ways how to further improve our clients’s conditions. We are staying at The Stafford, an excellent boutique hotel in the heart of the city, St. James Place. The hotel is well booked and the people are friendly – as they always are.

Having had dinner the other day at Scott’s in Mayfair and today at Les Trois Garcons at the East End made us think about „the crisis“ and „the recession.“ What crisis? The restaurants are full of guests, on a Monday evening as well as on a Tuesday evening and we had quite a lot of traffic within London on our ways back to the hotel, around 11 PM so that it took us more than half an hour to get back to the hotel from the East End.

There is money available and there are people who are willing to spend this money. What we advise our clients is to offer products and services that are attractive enough for customers and not products and services that have been offered for years. Innovation is a key to growth, if not THE key to growth.

Don’t let people tell you there is a crisis. Show them the real attractive restaurants, shops, outlets, service providers. People are spending their money there.

Do you also belong to the group of the winners who are asking „Crisis? What crisis?“

Yours,
Guido Quelle

(c) 2011, Prof. Dr. Guido Quelle, Mandat Managementberatung GmbH

Why Lufthansa Errs

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Lufthansa is a good airline. Lufthansa provides solid service, the technical level of the aircrafts is high, the crews are well trained and educated – no need to complain.

Lufthansa is always aiming for profit. There’s nothing bad about it, we would advise them to do so, and this profit mentality is one reason why Lufthansa recently stopped its engagement in British airline BMI which was a smart step since Lufthansa didn’t manage to integrate BMI properly – for various reasons.

However, since prices for air transportation are consistently under pressure, Lufthansa now introduced something that I call at least “dangerous.“ The Lufthansa group (Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, and Swiss) charges passengers who book and pay with a credit card an „Optional Payment Charge (OPC)“: Five up to 18 Euro are being added to the bill if the passenger chooses to pay with a credit card – even if it is a Lufthansa credit card.

This is not just ridiculous, it is dangerous for the brand, because it shows that the brand “Lufthansa“ doesn’t seem to be strong enough to generate more profit from the core business. Unbundling is fine as long as we are talking about unbundling core services. Adding a fee for a common process, like paying with a credit card is one, is just an indicator for helplessness.

Ladies and Gentlemen at Lufthansa: This doesn’t work. Even if you are adding a few Euro to the bottom line that way, even if other airlines will follow this bad practice, even if your shareholders will honor the increased profitability: This is shortsighted and it shows that you apparently need some really good ideas to grow.

You cannot grow by fooling your customer. You sure can grow by increasing the attractiveness of your brand. If you need some ideas how to do that, ask Singapore Airlines. And before you call them, why don’t you have a look at the awards, Singapore Airlines won month after month over the last couple of years being the most awarded airline. Do you get the idea?

Yours,
Guido Quelle

(c) 2011, Prof. Dr. Guido Quelle, Mandat Managementberatung GmbH

The „Pick-One-Philosophy“

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I know a lot of people who have tons of ideas how to improve their business. C-level executives, general managers, managing directors, business owners, all of our clients have in common that they don’t complain about a lack of good ideas. In fact, they have more ideas than they have arms to execute.

The trouble is, that success isn’t just about having good ideas. Success is about taking action. Success is about implementing. Strategies never fail in the conceptual phase. When strategies fail, they always fail in the implementation phase.

Ideas are intangible. The first step to success is to make ideas more tangible by writing them down. It is not important if you have an „idea booklet,“ if you have a file on your computer or if you have a box where you can collect all your notes with good ideas. The most important thing is to make them tangible by writing down what the idea is about.

People often ask me how they can deal with the remarkable number of ideas they collected over the time. My answer is always the same: „Pick one and play with it.“ That’s what I call „The Pick-One-Philosophy.“ Assuming that your ideas to improve your business, to grow profitably, are very important and that you just collected ideas of a certain caliber, it doesn’t matter which one you pick.

The time that you need to decide whether or not to follow-up on a particular idea can be used more effectively by thinking about this idea more intensively. You will soon figure out if it is a really good idea that has the potential to boost your business or if it is „Just an idea.“ If it is a good one, get your people at the table to make an execution plan. If the idea doesn’t seem to be good enough, pick another one.

The only thing you need to do: Pick one. Now.

Best,
Guido Quelle

(c) 2011, Prof. Dr. Guido Quelle, Mandat Consulting Group (Mandat Managementberatung GmbH)

Good News, Bad News – Language Makes The Difference

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I was boarding a US domestic JetBlue flight from West Palm Beach to New York and there was already an announcement at the gate long before boarding that the entertainment system will not work during the flight due to a technical problem – nothing I consider to be a real issue, especially not on a two hours flight.

Apparently this must be an issue for some passengers, because the crew mentioned this again when everybody was seated. Now, how could the leading stewardess could have said this? Here’s an example: “Ladies and gentlemen, our entertainment system doesn’t work today due to a technical problem. We apologize for any inconvenience.” Message delivered. Period.

The JetBlue language was different: “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please. I have good news and bad news for you. First the bad news: Our entertainment system doesn’t work today due to a technical problem. Now the good news: You have more time to talk to the person sitting next to you which is special, because we tend to do this not too often any more. And I’ll be with you; we will go through this together.“ Everyone laughed. Moreover a $15 refund was offered that was automatically sent via email as a rebate on future flights.

The leading stewardess built on this when we landed in New York: “Welcome to New York, we hope you had a pleasant flight and everyone has made a new friend today.” Again: Laughter.

Wasn’t that great language? What do YOU do in YOUR company to encourage your employees to use language that is friendly, customer oriented and still to the point?

Sometimes we can learn just by listening to other’s best practices.

Yours,
Guido Quelle

(c) 2011, Prof. Dr. Guido Quelle, Mandat Managementberatung GmbH