 |
Issue #30: October 10, 2003
To our readers:
Internal Customer Service is a vital element in the delivery of legendary
Customer Service and contributes profoundly to team work and productivity. For previous Tips
on internal customer service, click here and click here. Now there's a whole new way to
approach Internal Customer Service, one that operates on the principle that what goes around
comes around. It provides an antidote to the philosophy that states "you've got to look out
for yourself and can't worry about others," and its cynical corollary, "No good deed goes
unpunished."
Bob Littell, an insurance and financial services consultant based in Atlanta, has proven that
you can behave altruistically to your heart's content, because somehow, some way, it will come
back to you and increase your success.
Littell created the concept of NetWeaving, which has been called, with the blessing of Pay It
Forward author Catherine Ryan Hyde, the "business version of Pay it Forward." In fact, Littell
and Hyde recently agreed to write a book together. This is just the latest of many noteworthy
connections Littell has made through his spreading of the NetWeaving concept. Where Bob makes
his money, however, is in insurance and financial services. You might think that with all the
attention Bob pays to connecting people to one another for their benefit -- which is the heart
of NetWeaving -- he'd miss out on connecting to people for his own benefit. Not so, he says.
Plenty of business comes his way indirectly through his NetWeaving efforts.
In fact, he recently passed up an opportunity to make the NetWeaving concept his bread and
butter through selling books and charging fees for his appearances. He decided to maintain
the non-profit, purely altruistic status of NetWeaving. As Littell puts it, "NetWeaving
involves doing good for others with enlightened self-interest in mind. Our motives are to help
others but we do so with the confidence and belief in the law of reciprocity--what goes around,
WILL come around." This has proven true for Bob Littell and countless others who have put
NetWeaving into practice.
It can work for you too, as you NetWeave your way to better internal customer service and
personal success.
|
 |
Four Tips for NetWeaving Your Way to Better Internal Customer Service
1. Whenever you can, put together people who can create "win-win" relationships.
Littell calls this being a strategic matchmaker. Connect people who can be
of benefit to one another. Or if they're both "creative, talented, interesting, and
successful," put them together and let them figure out how they can help one another!
If you know a powerfully good salesman who isn't well connected to the marketing department,
and a young marketing executive who has talent and enthusiasm but who needs to learn how to
sell her ideas, get the two of them together to help one another. If you know a trustworthy
vendor who is trying to make inroads into your company and a buyer who has struggled with
undependable deliveries, put those two together. See if the colleague whose spouse wants to
stay home with the children and isn't sure they can afford it, and the colleague who is
searching for decent day-care can help each other out.
2. Help people find solutions to their needs and problems.
Littell calls this being a strategic resource provider. Anything you can do to help
someone solve a problem, fulfill a need, take advantage of an opportunity, or flesh out an idea,
makes you a more useful resource. It could be as simple as informing a fellow employee of the
company's college tuition reimbursement program when he mentions a wish that he had gone to
college. Perhaps a manager expresses a need for a systems analyst and you alert her to the
existence of a professional association for systems analysts. Or a colleague is nervous about
living alone and you tell her about a friend whose dog just had puppies. Solutions come in
forms we can only begin to imagine, until we purposefully begin to imagine them.
|
|
3. Keep your eyes and ears open to discover where strategic matchmaking and problem-solving can take place.
You have to pay attention to other people to learn what they need and who they
might benefit from knowing. Lift your nose off the grindstone and look around, talk with people,
listen to what they say, ask questions to clarify what they mean. Be interested in them. The
more you know about your colleagues, the more you'll be able to identify what Littell calls
their "missing pieces," and the more likely you'll be able to help them find those missing
pieces.
4. Follow up to see how your matchmaking and resource-providing worked out.
Don't be shy about asking if the people you've connected were able to help each other.
If they were, then your question has gently reminded them that you were the one who brought
them together. If they weren't helpful to one another, be open to the reasons they weren't,
so you can fine-tune your matchmaking abilities. Ask if a particular resource fit the bill.
Again, if it did, you've re-made the connection between that success and your recommendation.
If it didn't, you'll have the opportunity to reassess that resource.
Some of the NetWeaving you do within your company will be obvious internal customer service--it
will directly improve others' ability to get their work done, meet the organization's goals,
and eventually serve the customer. Other NetWeaving within your company will be related to
your colleagues' personal lives, whether in finding daycare or easing the plight of a loved
one. All of it will contribute to a culture of internal customer service. And all of it
will flow into that reservoir of NetWeaving from which your own benefits will grow.
NetWeaving is a profound concept to which we can't do justice in Brief Tips.
For a more complete description of how it works and how it succeeds, see Bob Littell's
two books, Power NetWeaving and The Heart and Art of NetWeaving. For details visit his
web site at www.netweaving.com
|
|