I’m blogging today from the second-annual Corporate Researchers Conference in Dallas. With the first day under our belts, I wanted to share some juicy nuggets from Wednesday’s closing keynote speaker, former Southwest Airlines CEO Jim Parker (2001-2004).
Anyone who has ever flown Southwest knows that it has a different kind of company culture. Namely, one that listens to and cares greatly about its customers. Dell’s Barry Jennings asked Parker several different questions about how Southwest’s customer service model came into being. Surprise, surprise – it had a lot to do with listening to customers. Here are a few takeaways.
• It started from the ground up. Southwest is not a legacy airline; it was actually started by airline customers in Texas. It has always had the customer perspective.
• Serving comes first. An unofficial company motto is that Southwest is a customer service company that happens to fly airplanes.
• Anecdotal evidence is worth listening to. Stories customers share is feedback that they cared enough to communicate to Southwest. This is a favor the customers are doing for Southwest! It may not provide any hard and fast rules but trends will appear.
• That said, the difference between what customers say they want and what customers exhibit they want are often two different things. For example, customers say they want assigned seating on Southwest flights but if they knew it came at the cost of Southwest having to increase prices, they’d be singing a different tune. In this case, cost takes priority.
• To be great, focus on what you can do really well – better than anyone. This is called a company’s hedgehog and it can help employees and customers better understand the company, its position in the industry and its mission. Discover yours!
• Create an environment where taking calculated risks is welcome. Parker had an idea to launch Southwest’s Web site back before Web sites were even a thing. He took it to his immediate supervisor, explained his idea and stood by it. Parker said he even offered to let his supervisor fire him if it failed, knowing that it would never come to that. Parker said if the Web site bombed (spoiler alert: IT DIDN’T!), his boss would’ve taken the blame and his name never would’ve come up.
• Find your lever of power (someone who will go to bat for you and back you up in your company) and have the guts to follow through! If you have a great idea, fight for it.
• The most important person in an employee’s life is his/her immediate supervisor. Pay attention to that relationship for a more positive company culture.
• Establishing a corporate culture does NOT mean throwing a big party only to have everyone coming in to work the next day still hating their jobs. A culture isn’t one thing; it’s a million things – not the least of which are respect, engagement, shared vision and values.
After Parker was finished, I asked a few CRC attendees who stopped at our booth during the expo grand opening what they thought of Parker’s keynote. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive but one comment stuck with me: “It’s a research-based business. He’s a lucky guy.”
In sessions yesterday, attendees were starving for information on how they can improve their internal research processes and increase support from other departments. How should we manage our contract workers? How should we set a budget? How should we present our budget needs to upper management? How can we start to transition to doing more projects in-house instead of outsourcing? How can we put a stop to “bad” research? How involved should the marketing team be with conducting the research? (A marketer may know the customer and know what to ask but not how to execute strong research.) How much do you rely on your software vendors to complete projects? I am not exaggerating when I say that the list goes on. These were all actual questions I heard asked!
It makes me realize that many researchers are not “lucky” enough to have CEOs like Jim Parker but it’s certainly nice to have someone to blaze the trail and use as a shining example of what to work for. Still, it’s inspiring to see how in this little-engine-that-could industry how many researchers are out there every single day, fighting the good fight for a seat at that table.