Tag Archives: BAM

Culture Change at an Electric Utility

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Daler Jumaev is one of many entrepreneurs coming to the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship April 26-27, 2010, from countries with sizeable Muslim populations. He is director of Pamir Energy, Tajikistan’s only private power company, operating in the remote Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast. 

Barry Moltz is an American author of BAM! Bust A Myth: Delivering Customer Service in a Self-Service World.

Daler Jumaev

Daler Jumaev

Daler Jumaev:
I came to the company in 2007, when it was in crisis. There was a problem with the relationship with the community. The metering, billing, service, communications and tariff issues were not handled well by the company. Customers, for their part, used all kind of excuses to steal energy and not pay. Most of the customers did not have meters. It was a very, very difficult relationship with the community as well as with the local and central governments.

We started to make group disconnections because almost everybody had high debts. But we also started to have community meetings where we went to the people and said, “Let’s discuss the problems.” The first meetings were very unpleasant. There were lots of frustrations, lots of arguments. People insulted us. There was dissatisfaction.

We knew they would have to change their perceptions toward the utility services. We just took our time and explained and explained it. I often personally went on the TV and explained where we were. Every month we printed a newsletter. We identified the top 10 questions people asked and answered those.

At the same time we increased efficiency. We had power losses of 39 percent. Today, we have losses of 23 percent, and for 2010 I put the target at 18 percent. Before, we had only 12 hours a day of power in the winter in the biggest towns. Today we are providing 22 to 23 hours of electricity per day in winter time to all our customers on the main grid. We are changing the habit of the customers so they are using less power. We’re not only meeting the demand, but we are also exporting power to other regions. We’re going from the worst-served area of the country to the best, despite having the most difficult weather.

The major challenges were changing perceptions and the mentality of all the stakeholders. People were happy because the CEO of the biggest company came and listened and took some notes and made some changes. It was crucial that we followed up and they saw the results: new meters, better service, a billing system and more power.

Barry Moltz

Barry Moltz

Barry Moltz:

Most entrepreneurs in the United States don’t have to deal with the type of crisis management that Daler Jumaev does in Tajikistan. American entrepreneurs may not get the support we like from our employees or our customers, but we don’t typically have to deal with outright theft of our products.

Mr. Jumaev was successful because he started listening to his customers as a way to get them to pay their bills and stop stealing from his company. Most customers just want a forum to be heard even if you are unable to solve their problems right away. As the CEO, this is exactly what Mr. Jumaev did. After the meetings, he kept communicating with his customers on TV and in newsletters. He showed real action he was taking. In the process, he was able to actually improve the efficiency of the service that he provided to all his customers by now providing 23 hours of power to the main grid. Mr. Jumaev was able to add new meters and a new billing system. The result was a 100% increase in service just by listening to customers!

What can we learn? Don’t ask how you can help the customer. Ask how you can make them more satisfied. What great customer service is varies from customer to customer and time to time. No one size fits all. A company needs to ask each time how they can make that customer more satisfied. Be prepared to listen for the answer and take action on what you hear.

Is Customer Service Passe?

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As I watched 14 hard-working businesspeople win seed money to start or expand their businesses in Africa, I was excited for them. I was also afraid for them. Excited, because they had made it through a judging process that started with some 750 competitors. Afraid, because now that they have capital, they really have to do it! They have to hire, plan years out, deal with red tape, and find customers.

One book I just read might help them on thinking about the customers’ place in their overall plans.

When more and more large and profitable companies get away with dreadful customer service, it might seem silly to argue that attention to customers offers a competitive edge for small businesses.

But Barry Moltz and Mary Grinstead argue just that in their book “BAM! Bust A Myth: Delivering Customer Service in a Self-Service World.” They provide compelling evidence that good customer service adds value, helps the smallest firms differentiate themselves from the crowd, boosts chances of survival for new startups, and gives them a solid footing from which to earn later profits.

Challenges abound. The authors point to the obvious one – when companies start and have a limited customer base, it is easy to satisfy customers; the hard work comes when the company’s customer base grows. Changing business environments also present a challenge to customer-service. For example, the spread of self-service and the ascent of social media means call for rethinking what a customer really considers good service. Probably the toughest challenge, the authors say, arises from the culture of disregard for customer satisfaction at many companies and from myths that linger and affect other companies.

Moltz and Grinstead bust many cliches, such as “the customer is always right” or “good customer service means the same thing to everyone,” and provide good advice, based on the experience of successful firms. They tell you how to derive real value from empowering customers. But their book rejects the accepted “wisdom” that customer service is all about listening to buyers. It is two-way dialogue, they say.