Our Customer Support organisation has several lighthouses dotted around the world. They are people in our TR GRC Customer Support team who project themselves and connect to other members of the team and our customers. They show the way to get things done and lead improvement every day so as to leave the customer experience better than they found it.
Lighthouses:
• Connect and collaborate internally & externally, giving before they take
• Anticipate and are responsible. They avoid mistakes, especially the ones we know we are making
• Value their reputations
• Embrace new ideas and learn new things every day
• Face facts and behave rationally
• Are fearless (not reckless), precise, reliable and relentless
• Amaze you, especially in that when you meet any one of them, there really is only one of them
• Are happy and enjoy what they do. Consequently so are their customers.
I am recruiting and need more lighthouses in the team.
These roles are in Singapore, Capetown and London:
Singapore Product Support:
http://jobs.thomsonreuters.com/job/Singapore-Product-Support-Representative-Job/2655194/
Capetown Product Support * 2:
http://jobs.thomsonreuters.com/search?q=JREQ002867
London (Support / Change Mgt – Contract Role):
http://www.aplitrak.com/?adid=bWFya3NpZGVib3RoYW0uNDcyODkuNTQwM0BleHBlcmlzdWsuYXBsaXRyYWsuY29t
Some knowledge of Customer Support, GRC and Salesforce is a nice to have. Being a towering, reliable, relentless, beaming presence is a must.
Joining The Dots 
I like this. In fact, if you could expand this into a whitepaper or, better still, a book you’d be right. We could devote a whole episode of our radio show to it.
Customer support is a really odd one, and one which most of the world get horribly wrong but when it is good, it makes all concerned feel good. I distinguish this from customer service which, in my view, is broader and is more an attitudinal thing attached to the ethos of wanting to please. Think about the vast majority of the service you get in the US. They just breed people who aspire to give really good customer service. Doesn’t matter if it’s a diner, a 3 Michelin starred restaurant, a train station, a cab (anywhere but New York), etc you get really, really, really good service.
Customer support is something above and beyond this. It’s more contractual and, all too often, is being paid for. Which is amazing when you think that sometimes you get worse customer support than customer service. No idea why. But I like the values you espouse above. I guess my only challenge to adopting these globally is that there are some in here that are quite culturally influenced. Embracing new ideas is good, but depends (often) on hierarchy where in some cultures ideas come from above. I could go on, but you get the point.
Knowledge of GRC is a red herring. If you can do the above, you’ll be good regardless. Beyond anything else, if you want my view of this from someone who once ran this from the inside out, you need people who care. And often care above and beyond their own personal circumstances. People who had a crappy morning where they had a huge barney with their missus / mister and still come to work and talk competently and professionally to their customers. People who are hugely hungover but still appear like the call you made is the only one they’ve had all day and therefore make you feel like you really matter. But they also care about the outcome, not a statistic or a tally of calls taken.
So, keep it up. I love this stuff. I don’t run customer support other than internally right now but, if I did support externally these are precisely the values I’d adopt.
Hi
I will write more on this idea. I can’t mention all of them but my team hangs off a small number of towering characters in every continent. Some of my lighthouses are landlocked!
I also draw a straight line between customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction. My lighthouses are hard on the outside but soft on the inside.
More to come 🙂
Anthony
Are they all called Murray ?
I love the fact that the personal qualities required align with lighthouse qualities – towering, beaming etc. That got me thinking about how we describe the skills required for jobs in the same old way….I much prefer your approach!
I finally got around to adding a little more colour to this. It comes out tomorrow evening.
Anthony
My team is scattered around the world, they are an amazing bunch. A handful are truly extraordinary, they are my lighthouses. I must get round to fully describing them, I got a friendly kicking by email for being so brief on this one.
I look forward to your further adventures and enjoyed your series greatly.
Cheers,
Anthony
Thanks Anthony – you have been a great encouragement. As this adventure draws to a close, I am debating whether it should be my sole blogging venture or whether I should expound on a different topic….
You write very well and include excellent photographs, reducing the volume of words when you do to achieve a lovely balance. I have experienced topics well outside my normal sphere of interest as a result.
As for your writing more, I hope you do, I am a broken record on this but here goes.
Purpose + Community + Media = Effective and enjoyable collaboration.
Community can be just one, you. My purpose is often an attempt to get ideas out of my head and into words. I took a lovely quote from Stephen Fry’s Moab Is My Washpot,which summarises this nicely, “I don’t know what I think until I hear myself say it.”. That anyone reads any of it is a pleasurable surprise. That they contribute and challenge a delight. I have learned a lot from the comment streams on my blog, not least the value of sticking your neck out a little.
Media can be read as channel also. I have another blog behind the firewall at Thomson Reuters. It has a different Purpose and is for a different Community, the media is vastly richer. Instead of clumsy toys like Twitter, Facebook and WordPress, it is a single integrated place, doubtless flawed in other ways.
My TR blog stopped for a while around the turn of the year. I had a new role, I was building community, defining purpose and using different media (e.g. talking to people!). I didn’t think of it that way obviously but it is why I stopped. Then one day my blogging started again, actually in a series written by the team, not by me. That is how I found my Lighthouses. I wish I had done it on purpose.
My point, blogging is an enjoyable skill to have, not an end in itself. The question is, what is the new purpose, who is the new community and what media will work best at a particular point in time.
I hope you do though. I will surely learn something.
For anyone wondering what I am on about, try the enchanting magicspello.wordpress.com
Anthony
I like the metaphor, it is strong.
I am a firm believer that client services are the true holders of customer satisfaction. Imagine where Apple would be without its geniuses.
Stuart,
A great product helps 🙂
Cheers,
Anthony
An update on this is due out this evening.
Pingback: Manage At The Speed of Light (Lighthouses Revisited) | Joining The Dots