Profits Over Service, Satisfaction: Microsoft’s Yellow Cab Lesson

Posted on November 6, 2012 by John G. Self

On Monday when I returned to Dallas from a weekend trip I experienced, first hand, strategy trumping service, producing less than pleasing results.

A Yellow cab driver, first in line, which means she was obligated to accept the first customer, refused to take me from Union Station to my downtown office. It is not a big fare, but I tend to tip generously because I respect the fact that hacking a cab is hard work, requiring long hours to make a decent living.

As I stood around while other Yellow cab drivers argued with my driver about her responsibility, I realized that her refusal was based on a strategy to wait for a longer trip and a bigger fare. She was willing to break a time-honored cab industry rule and create conflict with her fellow drivers to achieve her marketing/revenue maximization objective. Increased revenue, not good service, was her top priority.

Frustrated, I walked away and took the light rail.

Later in the day, I saw a clever, hip television advertisement for the new Microsoft notepad called Surface. It is a $650+ entry into the portable computer market designed to compete with Apple’s hugely successful iPad. Microsoft, which has always been about software—and unbelievably mediocre customer service—is now entering the hardware segment, the frustrations of their former hardware partners notwithstanding.

Microsoft’s ad with snappy music and a television screen-full of 20-somethings joyously dancing, opening and clicking their new tablets, started me thinking about the dynamics of Microsoft’s attempted frontal assault on Apple. There are plenty of disconnects:

Microsoft, with billions in cash reserves, outsources customer service to India replete with poorly designed barriers for access to technical support, inconsistent telephone connections, language barriers, and solutions that do not always work. They were first, but never the best, and there has always been a faint hint of disdain for the less than sophisticated computer users.
Apple focuses on the customer experience, from conception, design, distribution, and service, which is among the best of all technology companies. They are hugely profitable, making products people want—then love—and they support this winning combination with easily accessible and understandable technical support. (Full disclosure: I threw out Microsoft because of my frustrations with customer support. My search firm is now, happily and productively, an Apple shop.)
Both companies are in business to make money. Apple now is one of the most profitable and highly valued technology companies in the world, the title Microsoft once held. Microsoft’s long standing strategic emphasis on engineering profits versus delighting their customers with an exceptional experience has produced a slide to mediocrity. They have allowed their marketing/revenue maximization objectives to overshadow their customer service experience.

There is a lesson here for Microsoft and ambitious cab drivers. When you are number one in line, embrace your customers, take great pride in delighting them with best-in-industry service and support, even when they are a mere small businessman who just wants to get back to work.

A Reason to Smile: Using Technology to Change Lives in Nursing Homes

Posted on April 12, 2012 by John G. Self

Let’s face it. The Baby Boomers — and that would include me — are getting older. We are flooding into the federal goverment’s Social Security and Medicare programs at a record pace — one person every 4 seconds. I am not there yet, but I can see the entrance from my upcoming birthday.

This actuarial fact of life — or nightmare if you are frightened of the federal government’s escalating budget deficit crisis – has dire economic and social consequences.

If you are a young healthcare management graduate student looking for work, you may want to consider long-term care.

Once the ignored outback of the healthcare industry, shunned by many hospital executives as a career path for lesser leaders who could not cut it in the the demanding world of medical center management, long-term care is emerging not only as a rewarding and challenging career, but as a place where major transformation will occur.

Now that I have set the table of an important industry trend, I want to share with you a fascinating and uplifting YouTube video illustrating how long-term care teams are using amazing technology to enhance the lives of some people suffering from dementia — an affliction that has been described by family members as the long, slow, and painful goodbye.

The amazing technology that is making a difference? Apple’s iPod and headphones.

Watch this. You will be amazed.

If you can’t smile after watching this video, maybe a career outside of healthcare would be the best road for you to travel.

To invite John Self to be a speaker at your meeting or function, contact Kathleen Sullivan of The Sullivan Group in Houston. John is an entertaining and informative speaker who talks about life’s ironies, humor and the challenges we face. He consistently receives high ratings for his presentations.

Steve Jobs’ Legacy For Healthcare

Posted on October 7, 2011 by John G. Self

If you are a hospital CEO who touts customer service — the customer experience — and you have not heard about Apple’s remarkable product innovation, their laser commitment to service, and their remarkable out-of-the box retail experience, you are probably so far inside the box that you are immerdiately vulnerable to competitive market forces.

Apple redefined the customer service experience. Not just for the computer industry or the technology sector. Steve Jobs and his colleagues raised the bar for everyone in business. From their technical support access, which is far and away the best in any industry, to the amazing Apple retail experience, this company is about delighting the customer. They thrive on that sense of accomplishment.

When I think about the average hospital admission process and the endless waits in the ER that can be made worse by, in many cases, the absolutely terrible customer service and non-existent communication from the staff, I wonder why the healthcare industry seems so afraid to explore game-changing innovations.

When we talk about Apple it is easy to say, “Oh, computers, that is different. That industry is not anything like healthcare,” as if to say that Apple wanted to emulate the mediocrity that has come to define Microsoft. The beauty of Apple is that Steve Jobs empowered his people to redefine the customer satisfaction experience from a standard that said satisfactory was OK to one in which anything less than delightful was unacceptable. Outsourcing his customer support through terrible telephone connections to some remote outpost in India, which is how so many companies attempt to maxmize profitability, was not in the Jobs’ playbook. He drove profits by doing the opposite — spending money on taking care of his customers.

Apple became a bigger company than the once invincible Microsoft in terms of market cap as the result of its passionate commitment to focus on game-changing design and a level of service that delighted their customers.

As we mourn the loss of such an incredible innovator, it behooves those of us in healthcare to pause and to think how our industry can bring a little of Steve Jobs’ keen insight for innovation and a customer-centered delight into our complex organizations, and to think how we can offer our customers — doctors and patients — service that delights and surprises.

He showed that it can be done. And he offered some compelling words during a Stanford commencement speech in 2005 to help guide the way.

“Follow your heart…Your time is limited so don’t waste time living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice…”

What are we waiting for?

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