This session sparked some heated commenty. Focus was on simple people issues rather than disruptive innovation and kill the telcos. A clear clash of value systems.
Jack Baron
Terrible acquisition by AT&T. 35 managers around world, all gone in 120 days. Some of those left started Paetec communications. Funded by friends and family. Aim to be most customer-centric telco. “Nordstrom service at Walmart prices”. A sexless vision. But fine with it.
Focus on medium-large business, $5000-$250k a month bills. 50% local and 20% long distance. 15 internet, 15 managed services. Only profitable CLEC of size.
People are the key. Fairness, balance, ownership. Best friends together. Makes huge difference in success and trust. Everyone has options.
Paetec is not the most important part of life. CEO insisted I not come in to work when I was sick. Senior execs took radical pay cuts to start company. Common bonus program. No exec perks. No company cars. No CEO huge salaries. Promote from within unless significant skill set differences.
Big on community services. Big on family. Big screen in NOC and have kids in to use playstation on it on holidays. Lots of family events. Charitable events. Want to host a chartiable event, company will host. Pays dividend in how people view company.
[DI - sounding frustrated] But how does this deliver us cheaper better networks.
Listen to customer. They want cheap, promises delivered. Hire smart people. Recognize and reward. Process innovation. Technology agnostic. Just deliver what customer wants. Drive down costs with technology and process.
No IVR front end on customer service center.
$400,000 revenue per employee. Significant profit.
“We suck less”. – initial motto
“We no longer suck” – more like jetBlue.
Jim Sturtevant
Customer first is the secret.
Wedge Greene
Have seen corporations like MCI doing well and tank. Have never been part of the core group of any company. Never realized until I lost $600,000 at Worldcom. Was a “corporate resource”. My voice was always being heard, listened too, funded, spouted. Ebbers talking about things we proposed. Thought we were directing the same way we did during MCI growth. Media suggested I was great influence on the company. When push turned to shove that wasn’t the case. The critical number is revenue per employee.
Grew MCI from zero to $5bn in 5 years. With BT focus changed to new technology. MCI was about ways of influencing customers (friends and family). But BT interest increased personal visibility. Value of corporation dropped.
Worldcom came around. Company messed up. Value going up, nobody cared. Cost structure getting worse. Had to cut costs out of “fat” organization. Ended up cutting away the efficiency of the organization. Reward structure didn’t reward employees to perform in interests of customer and company at large.
Cost-cutting lost track of that.
Q: Big evil telcos. Do people do evil knowing it?
Investment bankers are evil! Telcos are fine. Once the decisions start getting being made in Wall Street, you’re in trouble.
The people who make decisions must be doing in the interests of customers. Can’t add value by just cutting people out of operations.
Q: Christensen said listening to customer leads you away from bottom 20%. Miss disruption. What to do?
The customer is always wrong. Org needs to lead ahead. That’s why advertising exists. Lead and then convince customer what they wanted all along. Just don’t make customer mad. Not the same as listening to them and doing what they ask for.
People get used to such a poor level of service from telcos. Don’t have to lose those bottom 20%.
Q: Don’t ignore people who do existing stuff well rather than new stuff. My objectives of starting company was (yes) make money, but also have a place people want to work.
We follow customer downmarket, because that’s what they want.
Q: This is about people, not technology. We came here to meet people. It’s about people, caring. That’s how the world changes. Wrong to challenge Jack who was focused on people.
Customer service is the product. A difficult product to sell. Reputation in the community, takes time.
Q: Yes, good corporate culture is important. But for many of us the issue is how to get disruptive technology to work, particularly when you’re not in the core group. An easy thing to say you’ll make customers and employees happy. Unsolved question is how to put disruptive tech into org that may be successful or sick.
Q: Discussion on whether panel has any value – isn’t treat customer well motherhood and apple pie.
Many just don’t execute this. Hard to build process.
MCI can only do so many gimmicks on existing technology. Run by salesmen, objective is to turn over the company into a sale. Need people who can give negative employee feedback that doesn’t make people leave company.
Q: Expert in the field in having people come to you and pay you to tell them they are wrong. Assume most people here are iconoclasts. Would like to direct people to earlier speaker on information flow. How is information flow linked to success? To cash velocity? Does it exist in service industries rather than manufacturers/assemblers like Dell?
David Isenberg
Transmission Capability (Gilder’s law) (up very fast), Transistor density (Moore’s Law) (up fast), Accounting Law - depreciation (down). Core issue.
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