Kudos for a change ...

Those of you who know me know that one of my pet peeves is national advertisers who don't think that Alaska and Hawaii are part of the nation.  In particular, I've railed against companies and organizations (including the US Department of Commerce!) who use an outline map of the "48 states" to represent the nation.

From the AT&T Website

On this blog, I've identified AT&T wireless as one of those culprits ... and I wrote their management expressing my dismay.  Well ... their latest advertising has magically inserted Alaska and Hawaii onto the map.  I don't know if it was in response to my complaint, but someone seems to have listened.

Thanks, AT&T. 

Unintended Consequences on a Grand Scale

I've written about the idea of unintended consequences before.  Unintended consequences are the bad outcomes that come from perfectly good intentions.  They usually occur because people don't think through all of the interrelated consequences of their actions. 

I've just attended a conference in India where I can foresee the government pursuing a very logical concept that will likely reap a consequence they don't want.  The numbers in India are unbelievable.  There are roughly (nobody has an exact count) a half a billion people in India under the age of 25 ... and a huge number are coming into the workforce every year. To find jobs for all these young people, the government wants to set up training programs modeled on the U.S.  Some of these training programs make a lot of sense.  They're looking at the hospitality industry as a new source of jobs.  Hospitality is growing rapidly around the world and, as a service industry it creates a lot of jobs for each dollar of revenue.  So that's good. 

Another industry they're looking at is retail.  This one is much harder to understand.  The good intention is to streamline the retail industry and increase its productivity.  Now, this was my first trip to India, but what is striking about the country is the scale of the retail sector.  There are literally millions of little shops run by individuals or families.  They look incredibly inefficient, but, on the other hand, they employ a lot of people.  If you could somehow transform this chaotic system and make it more like the US, it would certainly become more efficient - but it would eliminate a lot of jobs.  In this case, the inefficiency of the existing system is supporting a large workforce (albeit at extremely poor wages).  A new, more productive system would increase wages, but eliminate lots of jobs.  So, if the government of India is seeking to increase employment, it might be well advised to look at training workers for other industries.

Can't Employees Pay Attention?

I'm on the road staying at a hotel.  Last night I had dinner in the hotel restaurant.  The food was good, the service was lacking, but there was one thing that drove me up a wall.  The background music (which was actually louder than background music should be) was Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nacht Musik."  Now, there's nothing wrong with that.  I like Mozart and Eine Kleine Nacht Musik.  It's a beautiful little piece that runs about a minute and thirty seconds.

Here's the problem.  That was the only music they played.  It was looped, so it played over and over and over again.  We were in the restaurant for about an hour, so I heard the piece approximately forty times. 

Here's what I wonder.  Why didn't any of the staff at the restaurant notice this ... and change the CD or turn the blessed thing off??  The problem in the service industry often is that we train people so specifically to look after their assigned duties that they don't notice anything else might be amiss. 

When I worked for a Pizza Hut franchisee, I remember going into one of the restaurants in the summer and noticed that the promotional placards were still up for Christmas.  Didn't the manager - or anyone else - notice that Jingle Bells was no longer playing on the radio?  Once again, they were probably so focused on their assigned tasks that they didn't see that something very obviously was wrong in their peripheral vision.

It isn't easy, but in the service business we have to train people to do their jobs, but just as importantly we need to train them to see the big picture.  

I'm Picking on United Again

I guess I shouldn't pick on United Airlines so often in this blog ... but they're such an easy target.

I just got off a long international flight (Honolulu to Tokyo) and had plenty of time to read the inflight magazine.  In it, there was a self congratulatory article about their executive chef and the wonderful inflight menus he is creating.  The article featured and displayed first and business class meals (though it did mention creating meal boxes)  The only problem is that I was reading this article in coach just before being served possibly the worst inflight snack I have ever experienced.  It was a very dry and stale "croissant" (I had to put it in quotes) and a fruit cup with exactly two pieces of pineapple and two pieces of cantaloupe.  And, of course, the airline doesn't even serve complimentary meals in coach anymore.

There were two photographs accompanying the article.  One was the smiling executive chef.  The second was a gorgeous shot of a meal featuring a rare cut of beef.

United's management seems oblivious to the reality that 90+% of the passengers reading this article are reading it in a coach seat.  Like the Greek myth of Tantalus, they see something they want, but they can't have it.

The lesson here is that you shouldn't oversell your product.  It just ticks people off.  United does this routinely ... recently featuring "new improved" business class flat bed seating in business class, for example, when the great majority of their fleet doesn't have it installed.

Let's be honest about what we sell.