"How to Change Things When Change is Hard"

In past blogs, I’ve encouraged businesses to consider how to create durable bonds with customers through powerful customer experiences. Easier said than done, right?

Often, the greatest challenge is altering and shaping the behavior of employees so that they become truly customer focused. Indeed, you may feel that changing the fundamental culture of an entire company is a bit like trying to steer the Titanic away from an iceberg with just an oar.

If you feel that way, then meet the cavalry: Dan and Chip Heath, authors of a new, must-read book titled Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. If the authors’ names sound familiar it’s because the two brothers wrote Made to Stick, a bestseller that dedicated to revealing how to effectively share important information in a way that makes a memorable and measurable impact.

The Heath’s new book is, perhaps, the ultimate self-help manual. It draws on decades of research from multiple disciplines to explain the key steps to making lasting transformation in our companies, our communities and our own lives. The key to change, according to the authors, is learning how to overcome the inherent tension between the head and the heart or, as the authors put it, the rational mind and the emotional mind. They reveal how to leverage the strengths of both and how to guide them on a clear path toward dramatic results. Very readable, Switch is just as eye-opening with fascinating anecdotes that are, well, made to stick. During the course of the book we are introduced to:

• A graduate student who saved a nearly extinct species right out of college.

• A doctor who saved 122,300 lives in just 365 days by overcoming hospitals’ reluctance to change a set of procedures that led to medical errors.

• A buyer for Target who, single-handedly, won over her company’s merchants to the idea of becoming “upscale discounter” with fashion that was chic rather than dreary.

One of the astonishing revelations of the book is what a profound impact one individual can have. Indeed, the principles in this book are very applicable to a boss—or any employee—seeking to dislodge the seemingly unmovable boulder of a stubborn company culture.

In fact, the Heath's provide a great story about how one company transformed from being the least customer-focused entity possible into the industry leader in customer experience. In 1999, Rackspace was entirely focused on its purpose of hosting internet sites for other companies. Unfortunately, the employees seldom bothered to answer customer queries because the company culture was geared to believing that customer-service interactions were a road bump to profitability. Then, one day, a Rackspace customer was so infuriated by the lack of response to his many queries by phone and email that he tracked down company founder Graham Weston in person and read him the riot act.

In turn, Weston realized the company culture needed a wholesale change of focus. He hired a man named David Bryce as head of customer support who posted a banner on the wall that read RACKSPACE GIVES FANATICAL SUPPORT.

But of course Weston went further: he altered the company’s business model. He realized that if Rackspace tried to offer both premium customer service and cutting-edge technological hosting, the company would have to raise its prices to unsustainable levels. Result: Weston decided that the company would forgo its technological edge—he reasoned that large companies such as Amazon should be hosting their own sites—in favor of a narrower focus on standardized products and zealous customer service.

As the authors observe, Weston offered a clear and concise direction for the company. Too often, CEOs offer lofty goals that are too vague and imprecise to spur action.

But the biggest change of all was the abolition of the call-queuing system at Rackspace.
As the Heaths put it,

 “The call queue is perhaps the most basic tool of customer support.
Weston threw it out.
‘When a customer calls, that means they need our help, and we’ve got to answer the telephone,’ he said. Without the queuing system, there was no safety net. The phone would keep ringing until someone picked it up. To Weston, this was a critical symbol of the service ethic. ‘When a customer has a problem, we shouldn’t deal with it when it’s convenient for us. We should deal with it when it’s convenient for the customer.’”

The transformation in Rackspace was radical. Those employees who were deemed so zealous about customer service that they had become “insane,” were awarded straitjackets adorned with the company logo. As a result, Rackspace not only became one of Fortune magazine’s Best Places to Work, but also the first internet hosting firm to turn a profit. Rackspace passed AT&T as the highest-grossing firm in the industry in 2008.

That anecdote comes from a chapter in Switch about how changes in ones environment can change behavior. But I encourage you to read the book to discover how to reconstitute behavior in your business so that it is truly geared toward the customer. Go flip that switch!