Networking Ideas - How to work a room…
Filed under: Engagement, Leadership, Management, Relational Leadership
Over the past year I have had the opportunity to speak at the local chamber in my city - the Bartlett Area Chamber of Commerce. The lunch-time program is always packed but they give me eight minutes each week and asked me to share some networking ideas for the members. It has been a great place to network for me and sharing the tips each month has opened some new doors for my business. I decided that it might be helpful to share the ideas here. Hope you find some value.
How to Work a Room:
- Enter the room with the goal of meeting three people that you can help by:
- Networking them to someone you know
- Mentoring through a tough decision that you made before (Internet service, website, hiring, firing, etc.)
- Ask open-ended questions:
- The more you know about their business the better chance you have of know if you can help them or they can help you!
- Ask questions that that include: who, what, where, when, and how and not those that can be answered with a simple yes or no.
- You want to start a discussion and show listeners that you are interested in them.
- Become known as a “person who knows everyone.”
- When you are known as a strong resource, people will turn to you for suggestions, ideas, names of other people, etc. Now you are visible to them and have a reason to continue the conversation.
- Be able to clearly articulate what you do, who your customer is, and what makes you special and/or different from others doing the same thing.
- Try the 3, 30, 3, 30 concept. Can you tell someone what you do in 3 seconds or 30 seconds? If the conversation continues can you tell them what you need in and how they can help you in 3 minutes and/or 30 minutes?
- Be able to articulate what you are looking for and how others may help you.
- Too often in a networking situation, a person will ask, “How may I help you?” and no immediate answer comes to mind.
- Have a clear plan to follow-up immediately with referrals you are given.
- When people give you referrals, your actions are a reflection on them. Respect and honor that and your referrals will grow.
- If you promise to help someone, follow-through immediately.
- Follow-up with those that you meet who may benefit from your services:
- Express that you enjoyed meeting them, and ask if you could get together and share ideas.
All of these concepts are pretty simple and not anything new. But, perhaps the list will help you refocus on the goals and concepts of networking.
I plan to use the concepts when I “work the room” at the event later today.
ACCE 2009 – Good Conference / Great People!
Filed under: Engagement, Leadership, Management, Relational Leadership
So the ACCE 2009 conference is now in the history books. I enjoyed the conference and reached a new level in Twitter communications this week. You can follow me @bobfurniss – I will say that it has been a learning experience (lesson learned: check names, spelling and hash-tags BEFORE you hit send!)
I had the opportunity to speak about culture. My session “Culture Shift – Moving People Forward™” was a lot of fun - full room, great engagement! I really do love the rush of being on stage! Thanks to the folks that attended who asked good questions, took notes and laughed at the right times. We talked about the seven steps to transforming the culture of a company, a call center or a team. I am working on a white-paper on the subject and will make it available here soon.
Here are a couple of additional highlights:
- Patrick Morrissey, Vice President Service and Support Marketing from Salesforce.com gave a great lunch keynote about the impact of social media on the future of call centers. It was perhaps the best product presentation I have seen in the past 10 years! He shared their solution, Service Cloud, as the answer to tracking social media information inside their hosted CRM solution. I have been saying for a while now that social media is the “next” call center channel. He explained why and educated the industry leaders in the room on the subject. The amazing part for me was that only about 15% to 20% of the people in the room said they are on Twitter. Now, I understand that someone may not want to participate personally but I believe call center leadership should be leading the charge in understanding and educating companies about the need to engage. If a customer can tweet about a bad experience and reach more than a million people (followers) in one 140 character post, the customer service group has to care about it. Contact Solutions was on hand to teach people how to participate at the official “Tweet-up area” and to give out gift cards for participating (no – I did not win)
- ICMI is a leader in the call center space and did a great job with the conference. Mandalay Bay employees were the essence of good service. It seems the number of attendees continues to decline each year and it is always a topic of conversation as to why – access to information on the internet, webinars, travel budgets, locations? I don’t know the answer. But the people that that I met were great. I had a great conversation with the leader of global support for Apple and the I-phone. It was enlightening to hear him talk with passion about the call center being a big part of the brand. I am glad to have the new connection. I also met Tom Vander Well with E Wenger Group, a fellow consultant who specializes in quality programs for call centers.
- Las Vegas is an interesting place so there were prime opportunities for people-watching. If you have been to a conference in one of the resorts there you know that the hotels are HUGE. I actually counted my steps to from my room to the conference center (yeah I know, weird huh?) but it was so far I had to know. 2456 steps (+ an elevator and two escalators). I think that is almost a quarter-mile. Amazing!
- Congratulations to American Express UK for winning the Global Call Center of the Year Award. Congrats also to Blue Cross Blues Shield of Massachusetts for being named the runner-up. They were my sentimental pick since they are a client of mine. I had the opportunity to work with the leadership team and conduct a one-day seminar several years ago. I often tell people that they have a call center by which others should be measured. So, I think 2nd place is a validation – against the hundreds of entries. The leadership team is amazing!
- It was great to meet Dustin Hou and Stella Young from ICMI China and learn about the amazing growth of call centers there. They invited me to speak at their conference in 2010 so that is very exciting!
- Hot Topic won the Customer Experience Video contest and they did a great job of showcasing their call center. I met Joy Hussey, their Customer Service Manager and had a great conversation about their culture. Hope to do a showcase of their success in a future interview and post. The video is online at ICMI but without a direct link. Click here for the video page and choose the second one on the list on the right. The others are good also. I told Joy it must be cool to work in an environment where the product is a “lifestyle” so defining the culture is perhaps easier to “show” - but, of course, the success is in the details and the “attitude” of the center. I love the sock-throw - very great example of the “fun” side of the center. I am not sure how to create a similar visual culture say in an insurance center?
So that about does it for the update. Again - great show… Hope it was worth your time – the 140 characters of Twitter is a much quicker read!
Blogging and tweeting about ACCE experiences…
Filed under: Engagement, Leadership, Management, Relational Leadership
I am speaking at the ACCE Conference this week in Vegas. They call it the “The Global Gathering Place for the Call Center Industry.” I thought it might be fun to take you on the adventure with me… I will be tweeting during the day (http://twitter.com/bobfurniss) and blogging here from time to time about my experiences — what I learn at the largest contact center event in America and some details about the life on the road and the good (and bad) experiences encountered.
The morning started with a great smile and cheerful voice at Parkit X, the off-site airport parking company in Memphis. The leadership at this company must be doing something right if their employees are cheerful at 6:00am 
The greeting at the parking lot gate was simple and effective – smile (check), eye-contact (check), cheerful voice (check), say thank you (check).
I could talk a bit about the confusion that the airlines have created with the kiosk check-in but the lady at the US Airways check-in made the experience a good one. Mary seemed to genuinely like helping confused customers. I was able to grab a bulk-head seat with more room for my legs and laptop so that was a bonus!
As I boarded the plane the flight attendant passed the same simple service test – eye contact, a heart-felt welcome and a smile.
Many airlines continue to stuggle with poor service and several have announced a new focus on service. Perhaps the programs at US Airways is working.
Have you seen the video posted by an unhappy United Airlines customer? To date, this video about his baggage issues (click here for video) has had more than 5.6 million views. For years I have told frontline employees that if a customer has a bad experience they will tell nine to ten other people – but not any more. Today, with Twitter, blogs, and Facebook, they have the ability to tell thousands. And if they do it with some flair on YouTube like the above mentioned video, they have the ability to tell millions.
Question: Do your employees truly understand the impact that one poor experience can have on your company brand? Try this – go to search.twitter.com and put in your company name with words that describe poor service (bad, horrible, unhappy, etc.) and see what the world is saying about their experiences with your company.
The conference starts tomorrow. Just checked in at Mandelay Bay. Seriously, could the hotel be in bigger? My room number has five numbers (I think it has something to do with needing a zip code to find your room)…
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Bob Furniss
As founder and President of Touchpoint Associates, Inc., Bob Furniss has more than 25 years of experience in the customer service field - assisting organizations to increase productivity and profits by bringing out the best in their people. He has shared his experience in the areas of leadership and service with some of the top companies in America - companies like FedEx, Corporate Express, DePaul University, Delta Airlines, Hanley Wood and more.
Click here to email Bob direct -
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