By Mary Arnold
Remember all those calls we used to get during dinner, begging us to switch long-distance carriers? Well you can thank Gail McGovern for that. In her previous life as a marketer at AT&T, she raised the switch stakes so high that consumers wouldn't change providers for anything less than cold, hard cash in the form of checks--in larger and larger amounts. Once Sprint and MCI were imitating it and consumers were trained to expect--and perhaps even look forward to these--checks, it was a difficult program to unwind from, McGovern told us Monday in her current role as a Harvard Business School professor.
It was one of several "beware what you ask for" examples she provided Advanced Leadership Institute participants. Here is another:
From AT&T, McGovern moved to Fidelity Investments, where she was involved in setting up a ground-breaking, and subsequently very successful, customer relationship management program. Still there was much to learn.
Fidelity reps were measured on how quickly they answered calls. The target: 85% within 20 seconds. McGovern observed how the reps interpreted this metric on a visit to the call center on a busy trading day. As she sat next to a rep, with the phones ringing off the hook, the rep calmly answered each call in her queue, saying, "Fidelity Investments, please hold. Fidelity Investments, please hold. Fidelity Investments, please hold." Then, having caught up the calls, she turned to McGovern, ready to chat!
Assuring us that the rep was not deliberately shirking responsibility or trying to get around the rule, McGovern said, simply, "People will do what you ask them to do."
I would think this is especially true if you are measuring them on it! Keep this in mind as you tweak your incentive program or set any other kind of corporate goals. What will this mean in the field? How will employees interpret it? And just as important, how are employees interpreting your current measures?
Mary Arnold is VP/publications for CUES and editor of Credit Union Management magazine.
Also read "Blogging from Harvard."
