The new blog is at anthonycoppedge.com/problog

Essential Management Skills for Technical Directors

Embracing the Digital Culture

I’ve got a LOT - wow, a whole lot - to share from this week, but that’ll have to wait until I have some time & am not exhausted! In the meantime, keep up with my stream of consciousness on Twitter.com/anthonycoppedge.

Here’s the three takeaways for Apple or any organization that wants a loyal clientele:

• Communicate between departments (or ministries)
• Don’t let the “Standard Procedure” get in the way of highly unique situations
• Customer Service (or a hospitality/greeting ministry) matters more than you think

When Apple Care learned of their mistake, they first tried to simply follow standard procedure and told me, in essence, “we’re sorry, we messed up, but there’s nothing we can do about it”. But with persistence, it turns out that, yes, there’s a highly unusual way for them to work between departments, clarify some procedure (and hopefully follow up with some internal training) and make the situation right.

Because departments (or ministries) are filled with people, the standard operating procedure is in place to make the typical stuff flow smoothly. But the atypical stuff needs to be addressed by people, not policy. Making the atypical situation custom requires a bit more effort but, in the end, a raving fan of their can-do attitude and someone that now has a better story to tell my friends than the one of the failure on Apple’s part.

Because a couple of key people took some extra time, I was taken care of and my needs were met. They righted the wrong of their system and have gone above-and-beyond to make things work out right. That is great customer service! In the same way, when someone has an issue at church, giving them pat answers isn’t going to solve anything. Instead, because we’re all about people in church (a great tag line, by the way - kudos to Gateway Church), people help with situations and people (leaders) do our best to right any wrongs.

With social media like Facebook and Twitter becoming common-place, we either can let the negative story be told or a highly positive one that does even more good to our reputation.

Today, everyone has a voice. They will be heard. Do your best to help them tell a great story, not a negative one.