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AS CHAIR OF the massive Virgin Group, Richard Branson can’t possibly stay on top of everything going on at each of his companies, which include airlines, a mobile service provider, and an upcoming hotel chain.
But to ensure that his customer service employees are maintaining his vision for the company, he sometimes reaches out to customers or pretends to be a customer himself, he explains in his new book The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership.
One time, he writes, he even tried masking his voice on a customer service call to one of his companies, demanding to be put in touch with — who else? — Richard Branson. He writes:
I am so pathetically bad at imitating someone else’s voice that Penni, my trusted assistant for many years, sat there and let me make a complete fool of myself with some trumped-up complaint before saying, “Well, thank you so much for sharing all that with me, sir. Let me see if Mr. Branson is available to take your call.”
She then kept me hanging on for what seemed like an eternity — it was probably a couple of minutes — before coming back on the line to say, “Sorry, Richard, but you appear to be out of the office at the moment, can someone else help you?” before dissolving into howls of laughter.
While he tells the story for a laugh, Branson makes a valuable point. Whether you’re an executive at a major corporation or the founder of a startup or SME, you should never get so caught up in management and business strategy that you forget that you’re providing a product or service for the benefit of customers.
To that end, it’s not a bad idea to occasionally check up on your customer service staff by giving them a call and seeing how they handle your questions.
Start by going to your company’s website, Branson says:
So when you’re playing customer, one of the first things to do is to try and locate a phone number to call on your website that will enable you to get through to a real human being. If you can find the number — most organisations foolishly bury a contact number in some deep dark corner of the website after “Contact Us” has led you nowhere except back to the webpage you started on — try calling it and count how many recorded options, pre-screens and hand-offs you are forced through before you (perhaps) get to a real person.
If they handle your problem well, consider identifying yourself as the boss, he says, and praise them for their efforts. And if the experience is a nightmare, consider contacting their supervisor and explaining that they’ll need to address the issue with their team.
Branson says he used to regularly cold call Virgin Atlantic business-class customers to ask about their experience.
He also writes down observations about his own experiences as a Virgin customer, such as when he noted that he and fellow Virgin America passengers didn’t want a hot towel offered to them on a scorching Las Vegas day. He took that bit to management and had the policy changed and now cold towels are offered on hot days.
Branson writes that in his many years of business experience, he has found that unhappy customers who have a problem handled quickly and effectively end up being more loyal than if they never had a problem at all.
-Richard Feloni
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Jesus Christ. I can’t even try to understand the mentality of these savages.
The men should get the same treatment of death by kerosene
Worse. They should wet those animals down every 30 seconds and then light them up again. To hell with them, savages.
A fired red poker pierced slowly through the back of their skull. For each and every one of them.
Any one fancy a game of pool
You know wat I mean !
These guys deserve to be hung guillotined stoned quartered electrocuted lethally injected but not before some bad treatment first.
If they did it in this country they would have a holiday compared to what’s going to be their punishment in India, but saying that there is something wrong with the way women are treated it will hopefully change quickly because we are all doing some kind of business with them
it really beggars belief in the 21st century this kind of barbaric behaviour is tolerated in any country.
What is even worse is that the Indian governments response is to victim blame and offer advice to girls and women about when they should and should not leave their homes that effectively places a curfew on them. They have increased punishment but most perpetrators get away with it. Nothing done to try and educate these men that what they are doing is wrong. Nothing done to end the utter poverty some castes live in. Shameful
That is so fcked-up. Poor girl.
These rural villages in India are a time warp, its as if you are in the 10century, totally uneducated, illiterate and superstitious they make up the laws and take the law into their own hands.Police corruption is rife there too.Women are at the bottom of the pecking order and new born girl babies are left in the forests to save money for future dowries.
It is beyond my comprehension to think of, or understand, how regularly groups of men wait for, stalk and viciously attack these girls in India. Are they breeding a trait of paedophilia and predilection for abusive violent rape? It just makes no sense whatsoever and makes me so upset to think of how many women have been, and continue to be, abused raped and killed. Can’t the world force them into stopping this…
Animals
Animals wouldn’t do this!
Just light the b@stards up!
It would make one think that the Indian subcontinent would be a better place for women if the British were still ruling it.
Savages. Filthy low life devil worshiping filth
Sub humans,hanging is too good for them.
Seems to happen quite a lot in these backward kips of countries. Hang these murderers in public to make examples of them. Men in these countries have no respect for women, men from all tiers of society and casts. Filthy animals.
Just hang them. Arrest does nothing to deter these ‘men’. Just get rid of them. There is nothing redeemable in them. Their behaviour will not change. Their disdain for other human beings is deeply ingrained from the beginning of life and irreversible. Get rid of them and not only will it free society of the immediate threat they pose, but it will send a heavy message to others who might consider it acceptable to treat another living creature with such contempt disrespect.
Hands up who knew it was India when they read the headline? Something seriously wrong in that country.
Execute all criminals and remove their DNA from the gene pool. Every country. Until there is no more crime. Easys
Is this really the same country that said we treat women poorly?
At first I was horrified and shocked when I read the headline. Then I seen the hashtag on the image and I was no longer shocked, and slightly less horrified if I’m being honest.
Stories like this coming outta India are becoming par for the course. What is wrong with that place?
They deserve to be hung.
What the hell is wrong in India?? Why do they assume they can sexually dominate and abuse women? I don’t mean to be offensive but is it religious or cultural views that lead them to believe they are superior??
-What is going on in India with all these rapes and murders? India seems to have turned into a savage country for women and girls.
-Time to start a boycott of India like what happened with South African apartheid.
-Economic measures seems to be the only way to pressure these countries politicians into taking real measures into what seems to be a cultural problem.
-Shame, shame, shame on Indians everywhere for permitting this to happen…
No respect for women in that part of the world what so ever its sickening what goes on
I tough no one deserved to be killed by a flame thrower or by hungry dogs like in North Korea, until now
Neanderthalistic tribal/religious nutter’s! Hang em all!
Lost for words
Vote to boycott Indian goods and services…
-When there was Apartheid in SA the response from the international community was abysmal.
-The workers in Dunnes Stores mounted a boycott of SA goods.
-People said it was a waste of time inc. government etc.
-its well documented that it made a difference even Mandela said so.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”….
Boycotting won’t make a blind bit of difference, many of these attacks happen in areas of poverty we in Ireland will never understand. It’s like trying to sue someone who’s bankrupt.
I believe an example needs to be made though. I can’t pretend to understand rape and what would drive someone to it, but I can understand that there are sick twisted individuals everywhere, but all of these attacks seem to be by groups. How has it gotten to the stage where groups think it’s Ok to rape and a lot of these attacks happen in public. Worryingly if I’m not mistaken this article said earlier that the govt have recently taken to educating the police in how to deal with such cases.
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