Anybody who knows Alan W. Webber recognizes that he is a little a personality. He’s equal parts wit and charm, stoic and irreverent, and highly creative and provocative. He may also be brilliant. Through the years, he’s labored in federal and condition posts which permitted him to craft speeches in addition to have fun playing the growth and development of public policy initiatives. Webber also offered for some time because the editorial director and managing editor from the Harvard Business Review, a situation that placed him the main thing on what business and market-related topics could be discussed in the forefront.
Many most likely know him best because the co-founding father of Fast Company magazine. Like a charter subscriber to Fast Company, I will always be impressed using the publication’s capability to remain fresh and also to create content I really anticipated studying.
As someone having a fascination for customer support, customer support research which which drives client satisfaction, I’m always looking for books and articles that address the topic. Webber’s 2009, Guidelines: 52 Facts for Winning at Business Without Losing Yourself, includes numerous particularly thoughtful customer support gems.
Webber’s Rule #4: Don’t Implement Solutions. Prevent Problems, while extraordinarily simple, is an especially effective concept. All of us appear to reside in an answer-driven world. Upon studying this “rule”, I immediately started to consider all of the instances within my own materials: marketing collateral, curriculum vita, reports to clients, profiles, and fundamental business-speak where I’ve centered on solution selling or implementation instead of fundamental problem prevention. My prediction is that we’re all responsible for this to 1 degree or any other.
Webber makes the reality that “concentrating on solutions misses an important point: stopping problems to begin with.” He makes the reality that there’s a much more important idea than execution the idea of early recognition and prevention, which the first recognition and protection against problems can and does lead to massive savings and much more positive overall business outcomes.
I believe Webber is appropriate on the right track. Problem prevention is really a mind-set. It’s the idea that we’ll proactively look for possibilities for problems as well as for failures, and get rid of them before we must create or execute methods to resolve what should not have happened to begin with.
This is actually a vital concept in customer support activity, and is not a brand new concept. We’ve recognized the requirement for processes for example service mapping for a long time. Yet, how frequently will we really practice what we should preach?
So, when we truly need to give our clients or customers the service experience we talk a lot about, then let us start to look for methods to avoid problems instead of finding ourselves applying after-the-fact solutions.
