节目资讯
刊物:职场秘诀
日期:2009-03-30
难易度:High
关键字:stand by, at random, scarcity, spike
Advanced Studio Classroom is on the air.
Do you pay enough compliments or are you always complaining?
Hello, listeners, welcome to Advanced Studio Classroom.
This Bill Quinn.
Today it’s March 30th, and it’s the last article of the month. It’s a BUSINESS
article that is on page 42 in your Advanced Studio Classroom magazine.
Complaints and Compliments.
I love this article.
This is a really fun article, actually, to talk about, because we can all relate
to it.
It’s not something that’s so technical and difficult to understand.
This is something that everybody deals with either as a customer or as an
employee.
And to help me along with this, I’ve got two panelists.
So first off to my right is Brandon Bryant.
Hi, Brandon.
Hi, Bill, it’s great to be here today.
Good to have you here.
And Brandon, I had asked you a little bit earlier - we’re talking before the
program - if you had been in a work environment where you received complaints or
compliments,
and I just wanted to get maybe an example or two from you.
Sure, Bill.
I always think that complaints are a little bit easier to remember than
compliments.
So one of the things that comes to my mind is I worked in a coffee shop a few
years ago,
and I remember a guy came up and, you know, he was asking me something, ordering
something,
and I didn’t quite understand what he meant because he used a coffee shop term,
and in our coffee shop we didn’t make that a big deal to use all the technical
coffee terms.
So he got kind of angry with me and it was kind of strange.
He kind of acted like a coffee snob.
So that’s what I recall, and so he was complaining a lot, you know, in... not
only in his words but in his actions.
Ha, ha.
So his facial... his facial expressions, yeah.
OK.
Who is really upset about this coffee situation that was like not going well.
That’s right.
A coffee snob.
Yes.
I love that.
He was a coffee snob.
All right, listeners, make sure you’re... you’re not coffee snob, OK?
Next time you go out to one of these coffee shops, coffee houses, don’t be a
coffee snob, OK?
You can be sophisticated. You could know coffee. But don’t... don’t act like a
coffee snob.
OK.
All right, Winnie Shih is also here.
Hello, Winnie.
Hello, Bill.
Hello, listeners.
All right.
And I asked you also before the program particularly because you had worked in
education back in the Big Apple - and not an easy job or an easy place to be.
And I figure along the way you have plenty of compliments or complaints.
Plenty of complaints, let me tell you, but also some thank-yous and those
thank-yous are very meaningful when they come.
But I will share a story about a parent uh, who complained to me because his son
uh, already received the highest grade in a class and he had a 96 average.
So I give him a 96 and the parent came after report cards and asked me, ”Miss,
why did you give my son a 96 and not a 99?”.
Yeah.
And I did not know what to say, and it was...
And I told him it was already the highest, uh, grade in the class and I think
that’s what his child deserved.
But he was just, you know, not satisfied and complained and... became a little
agitated and angry.
And so it was something I’ll never forget.
Now, was he feeling that it was his son’s failure to score higher or was he
essentially blaming you for not scoring him higher?
Yeah, I think it’s a little bit of both.
Yeah.
Um, and you know, he... he wasn’t rude about it. OK, he didn’t say, ”Oh, you’re
a horrible teacher.”.
Right.
But I think he kind of implied, ”Well, you should know how good my son is and
it’s a 99 kind of good.”.
OK. He felt you really didn’t appreciate the brilliance that you were dealing
with.
Yes, so he’s what I call an overachieving parent.
Hmm.
OK. All right.
That you just told him to get a life?
I thought that and I really wanted to.
Look, buddy, just get a life.
Come on.
Come on, get real.
You know, a year from now, nobody’s gonna care about this.
Your son will be in Harvard.
Don’t worry.
Yes.
Right?
Yes, yes, yes.
96, 99. What’s the difference?
It’s just the numbers upside down.
So...
All right.
All right, listeners, I’ve got plenty of examples myself after working in the
corporate world, but I’ll get into them a little bit later.
I certainly received plenty of complaints, a few compliments, but lots of
complaints.
We are on page 42. Let’s have our first reading.
Complaints and Compliments.
Why do companies make it so hard to say thank you to the right people?
Your frustrations feed a lot of families.
In America alone, there are about 2.7 million call-center employees who are
standing by ready to soothe you.
But what if you’ve got joy in your heart?
Why do companies make it so hard for us to stay thank you?
Pick any non-customer-service employee at random from your company.
When was the last time that person received positive feedback directly from a
customer?
This is an economic issue as well as an emotional one:
In a survey of 10,000 employees from the 1,000 largest companies, 40 percent of
workers cited ”lack of recognition” as a key reason for leaving a job.
Well, the deck says:
Why do companies make it so hard to say thank you to the right people?
And actually the question that it’s asking is um, you know, maybe some customers
want to say thank you but the companies don’t make it easy.
And, you know, I don’t know about your example with the coffee house, but I’m
thinking at the schools might be different.
It’s a large organization.
Did your schools make it easy for them to do it or did they just make it
difficult?
Or was it something that a thank-you would just get lost in the process?
Well, sometimes if you have individual relationships with the parent or with the
student, they can say thank you right away.
Mmhm.
But, as a whole, well, the parent-teacher association would give, uh, the
teachers maybe a lunch once a year.
Yeah.
Something like that.
The PTA, the parent-teacher association.
And I can just sense from the excitement in your voice that this lunch... this
luncheon that they had was really made up for everything.
I can just sense in that, Winnie, that this thing meant so much to you.
They tried. I mean, they tried.
Well, the reason I asked about that: It was almost like something that was in
place and it was like, no, we’re not going to change it, it’s just there, this
works, it’s the thank-you.
People aren’t gonna think about it.
Companies don’t really think about it. Organizations don’t think about it.
Well, we have a year... yearly luncheon.
Right.
Once a year.
Big deal!
Right?
The teachers are working like crazy, and we have them... we give them lunch once
a year.
(Background Noise).
All right.
Brandon, let’s get into our article.
Complaints and Compliments is the title.
And uh, help me out with the first sentence or two there.
It begins with ”Your frustrations feed a lot of families.” And then it goes on
to say, ”In America alone, there are about 2.7 million call-center employees who
are standing by ready to soothe you.”.
OK. So your frustrations feed a lot of families.
I underlined that sentence just because I thought that was a funny way of
explaining...
What does that mean, Winnie?
Well, uh, to understand the sentence, you have to understand what they’re
talking about with call centers.
Mmhm.
So usually if a company uh, is maybe...
If a customer is not happy with a... company for some reason, they don’t like
the service, they don’t like the product, and they want to complain they cannot
go directly to the company or whoever’s in charge,
but they have to call the separate call center.
OK.
And so, for them to call the separate place, there are many people who work
here.
And they say that... that your frustration when people call these call
centers...
This... It’s their job to receive these phone calls, and therefore, there is now
this almost business or this role for people receiving complaints.
Right. It’s big business.
Yeah.
Complaints and problems.
It’s big business.
Employees, 2.7 million people, so.
It, uh, feeds families, puts a roof over them.
And so... Then they got people who are standing by.
What does that mean, Brandon?
That means that people are waiting there and they’re ready to do something.
They’re standing by waiting for the calls to come in, ready to help people or to
soothe the people.
Soothe them.
What does that mean?
It’s talking about to calm them.
So when they call in with a complaint, the job is... the job with the call
center people is to help calm the customer down.
OK.
All right.
So that’s their job: Calm customers down.
But what happens then if you’re actually happy?
We go into that next sentence, Winnie.
Well, why do companies make it so hard for us to say thank you?
Pick any non-customer-service employee at random from your company.
OK.
Well, all right.
Now, why do companies, uh, make it so hard to say thank you?
Now, this sentence as far as any non-customer-service employee.
All right.
Now this is kind of a tricky sentence because what it’s saying is that those 2.7
million call-center employees, well, they have systems in place for people to
submit thank-yous.
So then they’re saying: Go to other departments, none-customer-service
employees, somebody like in your accounting department.
All right?
There’s nothing set up for these people to get feedback or for them to get
compliments.
So that’s what it’s saying: Go to the other departments, non-customer-service
employees.
Go to the other departments: accounting or marketing or something like that.
And then, uh, we go to them at random, Brandon.
Yeah, ”at random” just means that without choosing them intentionally, um, but
maybe like putting names in a hat and just pulling a name out,
or put... put all the departments in the hat and pull a department out and go to
that department, choose a person and ask them, you know: Do you ever receive any
compliments or something like that?
So just randomly choosing someone.
OK.
And ”at random,” that’s how they pick lottery numbers.
They pick them at random, right?
There’s no order or method to it, so.
And then they asked a question: When was the last time that person received
positive feedback directly from a customer?
So it’s asking: What about these other people in these other departments? When’s
the last time they received anything?
When do you think the last time was?
Maybe never.
Maybe never. That’s right, so.
Then we get into the next paragraph and we find, uh, it’s interesting what they
say about that, Brandon.
Yeah, it says this is an economic issue as well as an emotional one.
Mmhm.
And then they say: In a survey of 10,000 employees from the 100 largest
companies, 40 percent of workers cited ”lack of recognition” as a key reason for
leaving a job.
OK. Now, yeah, I had underlined that as far as that first sentence:
”an economic issue as well as an emotional one,” Winne.
That’s right.
It becomes an economic issue because people are leaving jobs.
OK.
And businesses are losing employees and it’s simply because people are not
recognized or people, uh, they work really hard but nobody appreciates them for
what they do.
Well, so uh, people work at jobs; they want pay.
So that’s the economic part of it, right?
But is that the only reason they stay in jobs, Brandon?
No, they also want some recognition for what they are doing.
And it talks about it’s an emotional issue.
Well, you know, they might feel kind of sad if no one’s thanking them.
And if they’re not getting recognition, you know, they’re not too excited maybe
about the job that they’re doing.
Especially if they’re doing the same thing day in and day out and no one ever
thanks them, they think: Well, why am I? Am I making it a difference?
Right. That’s a very good point.
And what that paragraph says is there is more to work than just making money,
so.
Mmhm.
And if you think just that you’re gonna make a decision on what job you take
based upon the most pay, that’s not going to be it in the long run, right?
That’s right.
OK.Let’s move on to our next reading.