Confession time: I am a bit of an e-mail junkie and I have never really understood why people complain about the amount of e-mails they receive. However what I realised tonight is that I have just got particularly good at processing e-mail - so volume doesn’t really bother me - without thinking whether it’s a particularly appropriate tool for every kind of communication.

It’s become a bit of a cliche that, a lot of the time, it’s better to pick up the phone and talk to someone. Yet that requires thinking about the conversation and being prepared for it to go differently from your plan. Plus it requires time to call, leave messages and play telephone tag for a day or two.

Social media - blogs, wikis, online fora - provide a better way of communicating when collaboration is required or when you simply want to share something. (Confession time again: I have recently dithered over sending someone an e-mail link to an article when I could simply publish the link somewhere - on this blog for example! - and let the recipient know that it was there along with loads of other good stuff.)

If there was a consensus that emerged at the end of the evening it was probably that we needed to use e-mail and other tools that are appropriate to the application in question.

And then we all went home to check our inboxes - or at least I did. But I probably deleted more than usual…

To be honest, my idea of a short break over the August Bank Holiday weekend was not, originally, to stay in a chain hotel in Ipswich – a town which, generally, doesn’t feature in people’s top 10 holiday destinations. However, leaving booking to the last minute, meant that the original plan for a country hotel somewhere in East Anglia started to look like a tour of potential candidates for Five’s The Hotel Inspector. An attractive advance booking price at Novotel, Ipswich  meant a change of plan to use Ipswich as a touring base/bed for the night while we explored the delights of Suffolk.

As it turned out there was a lot more going on in Ipswich than we had expected and so we spent more time in the hotel than originally planned. And this turned out to be a good thing…

What struck us about the hotel was the genuinely friendly service from all staff, particularly those on reception and in the dining room. What struck me was that they took a real interest in how good a time you were having which is what you expect in a hotel but rarely experience.

Stuck in the middle of a roundabout, next to an identikit leisure park the hotel itself doesn’t immediately strike you as a great place to stay but the attitude of the staff makes it somewhere I would definitely consider going back to.

The acid test comes this weekend where a trip to Leeds means an overnight stay and given a choice we chose another Novotel – so, yes, great customer service does mean you get more business. I’ll be interested to see if the experience is the same.

Having objectives that are Specific (well defined and focused), Measurable (we know when we will have achieved them), Achievable (we know we can do them), Relevant (they’re important for the job at hand) or Realistic (we’re not kidding ourselves) and Time-bound (we know when we have to achieve them) makes a lot of sense. For example, setting a goal such as

“We will raise the level of customer satisfaction by 5% in the 10 lowest-performing outlets by the end of 2009”

would be a SMART objective if it was reasonably achievable to deliver 5% in four months and everyone involved agreed it was an important thing to do.

It would also be possible to break down such a goal into sub-steps, each with its own SMART objective e.g. “Make sure all check-outs are staffed during peak hours”.

However in some instances SMART doesn’t quite get transformational thinking in place: it’s all too easy to see how the sub-objectives might get diluted, ensuring that the “achievable” objective is missed.

To avoid this I propose an amended version of SMART that forces thinking about objectives to be a bit more expansive.

Specific and Measurable are fine – you can’t improve on knowing precisely what you have to do and knowing when you have done it – but it’s the last three that I think need beefing up.

Instead of Achievable and Relevant/Realistic, I use Aggressive and Radical so that in my earlier example the goal might become

“Raise the level of customer satisfaction by 25% by the end of the year”.

As a test, you know when you have a Aggressive and Radical objective when people object with “That’s not possible” or “We’ve never done that before”. At this point it’s time to deploy the new T – Tight, referring to timescales.

“Let’s do it in two months not four” is a good way of showing nay-sayers that you mean business (or confirming their view that you live on a different planet). I also find that T can also stand for Two or Three – hours, days or months: the lower numbers are more motivating than the higher ones, I find.

The key thing about this version of SMART is not that it winds up your more cautious colleagues but that it jolts you into a “why not?” way of thinking. In putting together practical stapes and SMART sub-objectives you can start to challenge the kind of thinking that, whilst perfectly correct, often leads to incremental change that gets increasingly diluted.

When you’re trying to move an organisation to deliver superior service this is invariably the kind of approach that’s required.

I was getting my lunch at a fairly slack time and walked over to the counter where there was a free till position. Charlotte, the team member behind the counter, was talking to a colleague and as I appeared she immediately turned to me and said:

“Sorry, I was gossiping. That wasn’t very good, was it?”

“No problem” I said. (Normally, customer service staff who are more interested in talking to each other than serving customers really get my back up but in this case any inconvenience to me or rudeness was more or less non-existent.)

As she took my money Charlotte offered me a free coffee because of her perceived oversight. This was really impressive because it said to me that her own standards of service were so high that she was keen to make up for any shortfall. My already high opinion of Pret goes up a further notch and the cost to the organisation is just a cup of coffee.

Derek Williams and Don Hales in their book Wow! That’s What I Call Service promote an admirable philosophy of catching people doing things right rather than punishing them for doing things wrong. In this case Pret’s culture meant that Charlotte was catching herself doing something wrong (or not quite right) – and that’s a discipline many companies would give the organisational equivalent of their eye teeth for.

The restaurant area was quite incredible – like a throwback to the dark days of 1970s service stations – all pastel/beige fixed seats and formica-topped tables. In one corner a badly tuned television played – with of course no-one watching – in contrast to the tinny background music. The unrestful effect of this was enhanced by the loud rumble of the chiller cabinets that backed onto the seating area. We drank unremarkable Ritazza coffees and got back on the road as soon as we could.

Normally I don’t dislike Moto services that much and can, just about, understand why prices are higher than the average High Street but I did feel that as customer experiences went this was mediocre by anybody’s standard and hardly restful.

A few days later I gave my, er, considered opinion via the feedback pages on Moto’s site, leaving a contact number as requested. About 3 hours later I had a call from the Grantham North manager to ‘thank me for my feedback’ and to tell me that refurbishment was starting in a few days time.

I’d like to think that it was the opinion of a customer service consultant that convinced them but it was the manager, on taking up the job about a month beforehand who had apparently insisted that it should be done. So, Louise Gosling, good for you!

The customer service lesson here is obvious: treat customer complaints seriously and with high priority. I was expecting a corporate-sounding e-mail with some explanation and apology: instead I had a pleasant phone conversation within a few hours.

I may not be back in Grantham all that soon, but you can bet I’ll view Moto a bit more favourably next time I’m thinking of breaking a long drive.

In the play, two sets of well-to-do parents meet to discuss an incident in which one of their 11-year old sons hit the other with a stick. At first the couples conduct a polite and reasoned conversation about how to resolve the issue, who should apologise and so forth but gradually a combination of circumstances (including a great display of onstage projectile vomiting) and the path of the conversation leads them into much darker territory, revealing the conflicts and tensions underneath the façade of politeness.

The play got me thinking about a number of things – such as why everyone (including me) was laughing at a play that was extremely bleak and fundamentally pessimistic about the human condition – but particularly made me think that the façade of politeness is fundamental to good customer service.

When I was in my teens I spent my summers working in my parents’ hotel. One year we had a feisty Australian Vietnam veteran head cook working for us called Harry. For anyone who’s had the pleasure of working in a hotel kitchen the most irritating thing that can happen is someone coming in to the restaurant five minutes before you’re due to close up and take a well-earned break before the next service. I remember a couple coming down five minutes before closing one morning and ordering a full cooked breakfast.

“Wouldn’t it be great” mused Harry, exasperatedly, “if we ran a hotel where we could just tell customers what we thought of them – ‘You want breakfast? Nah…’” he then combined a raspberry and a rude sign in the direction of the dining room. I was at an impressionable age and this anarchic approach appealed to me. Luckily for the hotel guests and my parents’ business I didn’t put it into practice and had to make do with watching Basil Fawlty’s antics on TV a couple of years later instead.

The idea of telling customers what you really think of them is appealing but something in our cultural conditioning prevents us just as – mostly, but perhaps not as often – customers are usually polite and civil even when stressed. Perhaps it’s a bit of a paradox but you’re more likely to achieve a positive emotional connection with your customers – the foundation of superior service – when everyone’s emotions are kept in check.

There are circumstances when this does fall away though and an item on BBC news recently shows what happens when alcohol and drug misuse cause customers to behave badly.

It’s times like this that remind you how front line staff in some organisations have to put up with a lot more than late sleeping hotel guests.

I was on the last flight back to Heathrow from Edinburgh last week and arrived at the airport to find out that, owing to a problem with airport security and the catering supplier (don’t even ask…) the flight would not be catered. As I had already eaten it didn’t bother me that much but when the flight got underway it was clear that not everyone had been informed, or had been given a voucher to buy food at the airport.

At first the cabin staff’s response was along the lines of “We’ll find out who you should contact to complain” (pretty inadequate) and progressed to the slightly more encouraging news that the captain had contacted Heathrow to arrange for something to be sorted out for us.

As we neared Heathrow there were no more mentions of what had been sorted out and as we disembarked we were greeted with… you guessed it: absolutely nothing.

Now let’s be honest, airline food – even BA’s – on a domestic flight is not something you’d make a fuss about but as it’s part of a not-particularly-cheap package so you’d feel you were deprived of something you’d paid for. Offering a small amount of compensation is not that great but even worse when not everyone gets it. Giving everyone vouchers for food would have been pretty useless in Terminal 1 at 10pm when everything is shut, but I would have thought that with a tiny bit of imagination somebody at BA could have organised at least a bottle of mineral water to hand to every passenger as they got off (there were no drinks on the plane either).

The point I’m making here is that it’s not so much the amount of compensation that you give that’s important but the way in which you give it. Doing something even slightly out of the ordinary would have demonstrated to 100-odd customers that BA recognised we were inconvenienced and were prepared to go the extra mile (or even an extra inch) to rectify their (or their suppliers mistake).
You can see the same lack of real customer care in the Terminal 5 fiasco – although the chaos and lack of preparedness points to two fundamental mistakes:

1) Not listening to front line staff who said they would need more time to get used to the new systems.
2) Not thinking through the customer experience and particularly thinking through what might happen when things go wrong.

I’m flying out of Terminal 5 to Edinburgh again this Wednesday. I’m just wondering if it might be safer to take the train….

Why so? Well, let’s look at myths and what they mean. Myths and legends are stories that stay in cultures for a long time, recurring in various forms. The BBC, for example, is running a series of Fairy Tales re-told in a modern setting and the other week the Guardian gave away a Greek myth with every paper (I remember a time when newspapers just had news - I must be getting old!) A story that stands the test of time is one that illustrates some fundamental truth about human nature - and can both reinforce and challenge the way we feel about ourselves and the community or communities we are part of and the things that they value.

But myths and legends are, by definition, old so what do they have to do with innovation which, by definition, is about the new rather than the old? Actually they have everything to do with innovation as they reflect the culture in which innovation will thrive - or not.

There is a substantial body of thought and practice around the role that storytelling has in organisational cultures and it would take a lengthy post to do justice to it. David Gurteen’s site - sign up to his excellent newsletter here - is a good starting point for the topic.

There’s a link there to Christopher Booker’s book on The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories and it’s worthwhile pausing to think how some of the basic plots he identifies might surface in organisations, for example:

• Rags to riches - where, according to Booker, “an initially humble or disregarded hero is elevated to a position of immense success and splendour”. This might be the story of how someone low down in an organisation’s hierarchy had an idea that saved a lot of money.
• The great quest - “a long and perilous journey towards an important goal” for example an epic transformation journey with a successful outcome.
• Overcoming a “monster” - taking on a larger competitor and winning.

Whether there are seven or seventy different types of stories is neither here nor there as there will be a vast number of variations that reflect the specific cultures and sub-cultures within an organisation. In some cultures a monster will be slain by collective endeavour, in others by the collective efforts of a team. Epic journeys will be undertaken by a powerful leader through a heroic struggle with his or her executive team, or through a consensus approach. (Something tells me the latter wouldn’t make such a great movie script - but I’d love to be proved wrong.)

And stories don’t just evolve through conversations in the pub or around the coffee machine, they evolve through the decisions an organisation takes. For example, in rewarding innovation do you hold a celebratory dinner for everyone or just the winners and the best of the rest? How do budgets get allocated - and what stories will be told about the decision-making process? What happens when the organisation faces a crisis?

Some stories will have a short lifespan; others will enter into an organisation’s mythology. And it’s the mythology more than the methodology that will determine an organisation’s success in business innovation.

I also wrote an editorial on the relevance of the CharterMark for The Guardian’s Guardian Public magazine. The magazine isn’t available online but I’m happy to share the article with anyone who’s interested - drop me an e-mail at nick@openchord.co.uk.