Communicating with customers

Modern customer service needs to balance remoteness with empathy. Wouldn't it be easier, organisations thought, if we simply recruited people who were good at relationships and systems, so they could form a bond with the customer while ticking off the boxes that we use to measure them? So much easier than trying to train and manage the diverse range of people we employ currently!

Ah, but then the ugly head of profiling reveals its second face. Profiling works if you know exactly what you are looking for and can frame questions that discover those qualities. Sadly, profiling is never done with complete knowledge of future needs, nor is it proof against people projecting a version of themselves that they are unable to deliver in the workplace.

So now there are organisations with perfectly defined procedures and a staff totally aligned behind the key behaviours ... and then there comes the realisation that the procedures do not anticipate all eventualities, nor are the staff able to deal with the diversity of customers that they come across. What is more dangerous is that any office community that is formed around common behavioural traits is less likely to notice or appreciate different traits in customers: the common and championed values are constantly reinforced and customer behaviour is translated into those values, so any failure to provide a service is seen as a shortfall, not a wrong direction. Do all customers want a friendly and flexible service? Or do some want to exercise a measure of control; do some want to see timetables and nothing else; do some not really care as long as its done? It all needs more flexibility in the system and more individual accountability from the service providers.

The process of individualisation is a cultural thing. As Gellner wrote, it is not a birthright, but a cultural construct needing constant reinvestment. Perhaps the education of youth is not providing all that is necessary, in which case the human resources departments of organisations become an essential part of life-long learning - not in the search for accreditation or the acquisition of new skills, but in the gradual exposure to dealing with diversity that explores the potential in all of us to be more human.

A sense of scale

Most managers lose sight of the problems of corporate internal communications because they are not aware of the limitations of scale. We naturally converse in groups of two or three; we have teams of between eight and 15; we can handle group interaction of up to 200; and we can recognise 2,000 faces.

But what happens when the organisation puts us in situations where the numbers are bigger? We need presentation skills training to talk to big groups; teams become squads with very different internal communication needs; informal large-scale communications for 200 people break down when the numbers grow too large, requiring structure and flexibility; and how do you communicate corporate culture when you cannot tell whether the person you are looking at is a colleague, a visitor or someone who has wandered in to find a toilet?

Communication is such a natural function that people resent the implication that they need help. Any organisation that intends to grow needs to plan its communications early.

You don't have to be brainwashed to work here ...

I remember having a discussion with a Training Manager on the corporate responsibility to educate young staff to think. We agreed on the country in question's failure to encourage individualism through its education practices as was evident in the profiles of the latest graduate recruits. Should the organisation take on the task of turning these new recruits into, well, people? For the mutual benefit of them and the business?

That discussion echoes still. In many Western countries there is an assumption of individualism that is not born out by behaviour. The current fashion for measurable personality tests in recruitment, job-specific qualifications and constant financial targets demonstrate little understanding of psychology or the history of corporate success. Organisations always rely on individuality seeping through the system to provide innovation and challenge. Organisations always are at risk from the Systems Thinkers who regard everything as definable and measurable - and who seem to believe that other people will behave just like them in all known situations ...

Sigh. The Systems Thinkers are taking over. And the radical thinkers, like the falcon in that poem by Yeats, are turning and turning in the widening gyre. I don't see enough innovation and I don't see enough interest in innovation.

If I had to draw a composite for the devil, it would be an economist who believed in post-war French philosophy and behaviouralism.

Corporate cogwebs

There's some interesting stuff in neuroscience about the cognitive networks that form in our heads that save us from thinking! These cogwebs are created by canalised patterns within the brain, where ideas proven by experience provide an easy heuristic for dealing with most of the world around us - we recognise part of the pattern, and the cogweb fills in the rest. This saves us time and effort. (For more details, I recommend Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control by Kathleen Taylor.)

But if the event does not fit the pattern, the cogweb can be a problem. A weak and uncertain network is relatively easy to amend; a fixed and proven cogweb can be so much a part of the way we think that we will change our experience of reality to maintain it. (Heidegger had an interesting essay on What Calls For Thinking?, where he postulated that most thought is routine identification of routines and we rarely choose or are compelled to look directly at the world and think things through for ourselves.)

As with individuals, so with organisations. Many corporate cultures have cogwebs that describe how things work. Even when evidence mounts up that these patterns are not accurate or complete, people will sift the evidence to maintain consistency with the corporate cogweb.

It seems to me that the corporate environment is an ideal breeding ground for such concrete cogwebs: every organisation requires good practices to ensure consistency and new arrivals learn their jobs by learning the rituals of perception and response ... but when that perception is no longer appropriate, are there the mechanisms and motivations to correct it? There are many people within organisations whose identity is wrapped up in the practices and perceptions of their job and who enjoy obeying orders as it takes away their need to evaluate the world, with all the effort and doubt involved.

There has to be effective feedback mechanisms within an organisation in order to create effective cogwebs and then test their veracity. An organisation needs to manage its patterns of thought and be prepared to change. In fact, changing thoughts should be a constant agenda item and managers should be charged with identifying shortfalls in current thinking.

The control of environment

I've been wondering how an organisation controls its communications environment to the maximum efficiency and I'm beginning to think that the key is in the amount of leakage from the external environment that is encouraged. There are various stories about businesses that sell their culture so completely that everything from socks to vocabulary is standardised, ensuring complete compliance with corporate goals - however, those corporate goals are likely to become the wrong targets and increasingly inappropriate in a changing environment.

So the need to get the message across is countered by the need to ensure that it is the right message. That second point is a cauldron of trouble - does it suggest that the direction is the wrong one? Does it threaten the ego of the senior directors? Does it give too much encouragement to the Change Freaks who believe, like Shiva, in development through destruction, without appreciating that systems work and that there are people whose identity is bound up in those systems?

I've seen organisations with no real message to communicate; and organisations where their message fails to appreciate the local culture, so that it is filtered and flattened to comply with local beliefs and objectives; and organisations where the message is so heavy-handed that criticism is traitorous and feedback is carefully controlled ... and ignored.

The consistent observation is that organisations do not understand the factors involved, I suppose, and are ill-equipped to deal with them on a personal and systematic level. The key gaps are usually in organisational intelligence functions and the related field of internal communications.

The worst thing is, from my point of view as a communications consultant, is that so few organisations seem to care!

Controlling communications

Controlling the effectiveness of communications requires some understanding of the communications environment. This is beyond the interests of most people or organisations - isn't it easier if people simply appreciate what we say? As organisations grow in functional complexity, so the backgrounds of staff become more diverse (particularly due to technical attitudes, job history, local language, aspirations etc.); and, as an office grows in size, so it is no longer possible for even the most inclusive manager to juggle the needs of staff (the limit is about 200).

So either an organisation and its management undertaken to understand the communications needs of staff ... or they manage the environment so that only people likely to appreciate the existing communications structures will thrive.

I have seen a number of organisations around the world where the communications environment is fixed and the staff have to fit in, so that only certain types of people succeed. This leads to a self-perpetuating cult of management, without the essential criticism of its communications, without the obvious conflicts that would indicate its own short-comings, and with a simplistic satisfaction at the perceived efficacy of its actions.

Is that so bad? Yes, it is. If the environment is not understood, then the organisation does not know what threats it faces, nor what ideas exist within the organisation to counter or exploit those changes. Control of the communications environment can only last so long before reality chomps through. If the objective remains control rather than understanding, then the organisational management fight their corner like a cult, claiming to be misunderstood, shouting their message ever louder ...

It's all about communication. It's always about communication. But what sort of communication is a blog? When I train people in communications, I teach them that effective communication requires an understanding of the communication needs of the audience - but what are the needs of a blogging audience? I have recommended the format for certain corporate clients to make public the CEOs thoughts and travails, suitably edited to be consistent with corporate values and standards, of course! Otherwise, isn't it all ego and a existential plea for confirmation of existence?

I have used other people's blogs for an on-the-spot report on certain world events, or to see what former friends are up to, but I am uncomfortable with the format of a public diary. So I shall persevere and try and find a use for a blog in an effort to improve my understanding of communications.