Clive Simpkins

Tin-Pot Despots

When the ANC became the ruling party in SA politics, it had big-time debts, obligations, favours (call ‘em what you will) to repay many people and indeed, countries. One of the easiest ways to do so at local level was to create an inordinately cumbersome and (subsequently proven) short-on-delivery mechanism called provincial governments headed by ‘premiers’. Maybe the time has come to rein in the wannabe tin-pot despots at provincial level who flout the rules of etiquette and social governance.

A report in the Citizen of 19^th April 2006 illustrates a distasteful example which may point to a deeper malaise. Limpopo premier Sello Moloto clearly believes that if he takes a leaf out of the diary of Thabo Mbeki, he might also one day rise to significant heights in SA politics. The Prez was notorious in his first term, for arriving late at events. To the extent that no less an eminence grise than Nelson Mandela upbraided him publicly for his tardiness on more than one occasion.

The issue with Moloto concerns national minister of Correctional  Services, Ngconde Balfour’s recent visit to a Polokwane prison. To cut a long story short, Moloto has developed a reputation for being up to two hours late for functions and engagements. He kept Balfour waiting for so long that the latter had to re-schedule other appointments to keep his diary on track.

The disingenuous comment from Moloto’s spokesperson, one Lucky Nchabaleng, was that if Balfour is visiting Moloto’s province, Moloto ‘takes precedence’ (in political protocol hierarchy/status terms). Eish! His piece de resistance: ‘The premier may be late if he wants to, it is his province.’ It is? I thought he was a public servant reporting ultimately to we tax payers who pay his inflated salary? Would he also claim ‘precedence’ over President Mbeki one wonders? Mind you, if they were both late, their meeting would be quite well co-ordinated! ;-) More seriously this behaviour smacks of arrogance, insensitivity or disrespect. You choose. Whichever, it says clearly, ‘You don’t matter.’

It’s also the sort of ego-driven behaviour that minister of provincial and local government Sydney Mufamadi or President Mbeki should rein in – immediately.

Limpopo is not Moloto’s personal fiefdom. One of his aides describes him as ‘the last Stalinist’. Maybe he’s hoping to be embalmed (a la Lenin) in Polokwane town square one day? Stop him now.

If what Moloto’s spokesperson says genuinely reflects the attitude of this local politico, then something needs to be done pretty darned quickly. If (the salvation of most ‘provincial’ – lovely double entendre there – premiers) someone’s been ‘quoted out of context’ or there was (the Irwinism of 2006) ‘human instrumentality’ in the screw-up, then fire the damn spokesperson – or send him on a communications course.

Woolworths pisses me off again

Woolies (Woolworths South Africa) Management may need a fresher on what I’ve dubbed ‘complementary to business skills’ training. In the old days these would have been called soft skills. But there’s nuthin’ soft about ‘em! They’re the lifeblood of a modern, demanding, customer-centric retail environment.

My last blog was also about Woolies. That one referred to the fluctuating and iffy service to be encountered in Woolies coffee shops. Not just be me but by cognoscenti. Their directorate responded appropriately and the matter sounds like it’s firmly in hand. The fatal flaw in their coffee shop equation in my opinion is that the recruitment of the staff and the operation itself is evidently outsourced. Meaning there’s little control over that link in the value chain to which the customer is exposed. That’s never a good thing. As my dendritic mate Roy Blumenthal pithily observed whilst we sat in Woolies Hyde Park coffee shop over lattes last week, ‘For the customer, this IS Woolies!’ So, whatever’s under your roof or associated with you is an inextricably interwoven part of your brand image. Geddit?

What’s triggered this posting however, is that long weekend Sunday morning 16^th April, post my Pick’n Pay Hyde Park shopping stint we head as usual for Woolies Hyde Park for the balance of the grocery shop-out.

The doors to the store are closed – neatly printed signs on the door indicating why - and a manager is standing outside. He says, ‘We have a problem with our system, which will hopefully be up in a few minutes. You can come in if you want to have coffee in the restaurant, or otherwise….’ His voice trailed off. I took that to mean, ‘or…you can wait outside.’ I’m not going to write screeds on it. I’m actually too pissed with them to even bother. But how nice if the scenario had been:

Approach door. Manager: ‘Good morning! Our computer server is down for a few minutes. Would you like to pop into the coffee shop as our guest until it comes up again?’ It was a long weekend Sunday. Not exactly droves of people about. It’s never the idea of a free anything. It’s the thoughtfulness and social skill behind it. So we did the coffee shop thing, paid the unnecessary R 58 and then shopped. Irritating – and this thoughtlessness is happening all too frequently in Woolworths. I wonder if the manager would have thought differently if the coffee shop were not an outsourced entity? i.e. the schlep factor of sorting free coffees for waiting clients? Or does he just not know any better?

Time to re-look management training program modules? And no, I don’t wanna run them, thanks.

Related Tags: Woolworths, Customer Service, Emotional Intelligence, Social skill, Initiative

Political Bounce-back

Had Prakash Naidoo, deputy political editor of the Financial Mail on the blower, asking for my opinion on the likelihood of the South African former deputy President, Jacob Zuma, recovering from his rape and corruption court trials. Here's what appeared in this week's edition. Click on the image to read. Below the scan is the full transcript of what I said in answer to Prakash's questions, which may add even further perspective to this troubling debacle.

P.N. Hi Clive,

Nice to chat earlier and it is most kind of you to make the time over a weekend to respond to my questions.

CS: Welcome!

P.N. As mentioned earlier, my story seeks to answer a very basic and simple question: Can Jacob Zuma survive his latest travails (even if he is acquitted) and will he be able to bounce back as a contender in the presidential race?

CS: I have no doubt in my mind that Zuma is going to bounce back in some shape or form. His supporters exhibit, in the main, a lack of sensitivity, discernment and intellectual function. This is beyond 'Zuma right or wrong' - this is 'Zuma no matter what.' When you have women carrying placards referring to Zuma's accuser, reading 'The bitch must die' it's an indication that the lowest common denominator of social skill, sophistication and independent thought is behind the man. In quite what guise he'll bounce back is difficult to predict. If only because, as I understand it, a criminal conviction which does not offer the option of a fine rules out someone holding formal political office. I don't know what the ANC's constitution ruling is regarding party membership or office bearers on the same score. But Bantu Holomisa was expelled from the ANC was he not for a relatively minor 'disciplinary' infraction?

P.N. The rape trial has already thrown out some bone-achingly embarrassing personal details - extra- marital sex, sex without a condom with an HIV-positive person etc. Can any person really still be a contender for public office after this sort of stuff is aired publicly?

CS: Yes. Bill Clinton is a prime example. He may not hold formal office but he still has enormous clout and status.

P.N. Also keep in mind that Zuma is likely to take the stand himself on Monday and will in the course of the week be subjected to some pretty damaging cross-examination.

CS: He could be coached by (defense advocate) Kemp J Kemp to the point that most if not all bases and possible lines of questioning are well covered. People also have a sneaking suspicion when a rape charge is brought against a 'celebrity status' person, that it's a liaison that's gone awry rather than a real rape. And the complainant will (regretfully) still be regarded by much of SA society as a relatively 'low status' individual by comparison with Zuma, making his 'rehabilitation' even easier.

P.N. And most importantly, by the end of the rape trial, within months Zuma will go into the corruption trial. And if the Shabir Shaik trial is anything to go by, this could be even more revealing in terms of his personal finances and just how beholden he is to private benefactors.

CS: My personal opinion is that if the truth be known, Zuma is not the only (in his case former) government figure in this position. Lobbyists and those seeking influence have a habit of getting the benefactor over a barrel of some sort. If you look at British PM Tony Blair's recent 'loans to the party' debacle, people almost seem to expect politicians to be beyond the pale when dealing with financial matters in this 'anything goes' era. Sad, but true. The concept of good corporate governance somehow seems to have eluded politics and politicians. If we accept that 99% of politicians are in politics not to serve the people, but for the money, status and power that goes with office, we have to accept that they're inherently flawed characters before they even get out of the starting blocks. Add a monumental ego and it's an ugly personality package.

P.N. 1/ In terms of the international scenario, has anyone well-known (or in similar position) managed to survive such damaging (and tawdry) indictments and still bounce back?

CS: The late and erstwhile British MP John Profumo, Richard Nixon, Eva Peron, Imelda Marcos, Corazon Aquino, Bill Clinton. In South Africa, a number of high-profile financial advisors and dealers have also morphed from zero to hero again.

P.N. 2/ If your contention is that Zuma can come back from this, would his rehabilitation be dependent on him being found not guilty? ( in both trials)

CS: What we've seen internationally in politics and elsewhere is that what prevails in a court of law doesn't necessarily hold water in the court of public opinion.

P.N. 3/  Does the morality of our leaders in SA count for anything in politics?

CS: If one takes the ongoing incompetence, corruption and scandals to have emerged from Mpumalanga province alone over the last few years, it would appear not.

P.N. 4/  Is it possible that Zuma's popularity could be tied to the fact that the vast majority of his supporters believe that his troubles are part of a political conspiracy and can this even work in his favour?

CS: Emphatically. There has always been the perception of the Xhosa-Nostra tribal divide, if not quite the actuality. It's a great card to play and IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi has seldom missed an opportunity to play it with subtlety and finesse.

P.N. 5/ What would Zuma need to do between now and his next trial to still be a player in politics?

CS: That's dependent on so many variables that one can only begin to speculate as some of the balls in play, in the air, start to land. But he may well continue to play a powerful backstage role via 'Zulu politics' even if he's precluded from a formal position.

P.N. 6/ And finally:  If you were personally responsible for turning Zuma's image around in time for the ANC National Conference in December 2007 (when the next leader of the ANC is chosen), how exactly will you go about it?

CS: I'd leave for outer Mongolia immediately and throw away my mobile phone and Internet 3G card! More seriously, his image rehabilitation will only ever be among the unthinking masses. People with any moral and ethical fibre will continue to regard him as having committed the unpardonable sin - whether guilty or not of rape or corruption. His 'sin' in the view of the cognoscenti, will be to have allowed the issues to be laundered in public. Perhaps more important: Spiritually evolved people expect those in positions of leadership and influence to run according to a life and career script of self-control and discretion. His behaviour, regardless of legal culpability, hardly falls into that category.

Related Tags: Political scandals, Rape, Corruption, Jacob Zuma, South African politics, Gender equality, Reputation

Prepping for problems

The days of responding to a business or personal crisis only as and when it occurs are gone. Sensible life-planning requires some sort of pro-active thinking and an anticipation of the steps that will be taken when the proverbial hits the fan. A classic example of a failure to plan for problems is the Woolworths coffee shop in the Gateway Centre in Durban . Here’s a mini case study from which we can all learn.

I was down in Durbs and we decided to have a quick breakfast in the Woolies Gateway coffee shop before heading home. We placed a simple order of two toasted English muffins with scrambled egg, smoked salmon and two lattes to be served with the breakfast itself.

OK, I didn’t time it, but I’ve certainly never waited anywhere near as along when ordering exactly the same items at the Woolworths coffee shop in Hyde Park Johannesburg, which is attended by polite, bright, really efficient young people. The Gateway staff spent more time chatting to passing friends and colleagues than they did attending to customers. No peripheral-vision, customer-noticing eye contact was in evidence. We had to wave each time you needed someone.

The food arrived after an inordinately long wait and instead of the smoked salmon being added to the scrambled egg, a few pieces appeared to have been flung, in desultory fashion, on top of the egg. We began munching away at the tasteless, unseasoned fare and awaited our lattes. And waited. Until I moved into aggro mode and added some volume to my vocal protest. Still chatting to colleagues, the young waitress squeezed too large a dollop of honey into my guest’s latte, rendering it undrinkable. I complained to the waitress about her tacky service (no apology forthcoming, but rather just an aggrieved glare) and called for the manager.

Said manager arrived way too many minutes later, sweat on brow, greasy-handed and began to explain that the service had fallen off the rails because two or three (clearly kitchen) staff hadn’t pitched. The manager was physically cooking the breakfasts. He apologised, we empathised and it immediately struck me that neither he nor the general management of the Woolies Gateway store could have thought through a ‘what if?’ scenario to handle just such a situation. Or if they had, it wasn’t being implemented.

Suggested Crisis Management 101: a) Close off part of the restaurant – trying to manage the whole shebang while kitchen staff-deprived is inviting trouble. b) Tell customers before you seat them: ‘We’re short-staffed today so service might take longer than usual, for which we apologise. Are you OK with that?’ Some people (like me) would opt to go elsewhere. Others with more time to spare might still be cool with it. c) Tell the remaining staff that they have to be extra vigilant to keep the potentially impatient customers happy. d) Use your discretion and give every customer their coffee, tea or latte free that day with the message that it’s in appreciation of their understanding and patience. Would they then be more understanding and come back again? You betcha! Would I go back there again? Only under duress.

It’s not just major corporates that need to plan for what they’d do when things go wrong. Something, at some stage, will go wrong in the tiniest enterprise or facet of a larger business. Do you know how you’d handle it? Have you walked your staff through the scenario? Do they know what their individual roles would be? And if not, why not? Don’t go hide in the kitchen if things go wrong. That’s not your place. Get out there and create a solution. Even if it means totally closing the coffee shop in preference to doing relationship damage.

Footnote: I asked the Woolies customer service team for their comments prior to publishing. They apologised for the experience, thanked me for taking the trouble and said the comments would be forwarded to Gateway management and used to prevent a recurrence. That’s more like the Woolies I know.

Related Tags: Customer service, Crisis management, Planning, Anticipation

Is Vodacom losing it on HSDPA? More travails...

OK – it might sound like I’m on an anti-Vodacom roll. Not so. But I am left in awe at some of the messy marketing taking place. I was an immediate adopter of Vodacom’s less than brilliant 3G service from inception. At one point in its evolution and in sheer desperation, I tried i-Burst. It was even worse. Other than some artery-popping irritation as the software and firmware upgrades reached version 6.01 and 17 respectively, it’s finally out worked pretty OK for me.

This last weekend was the Vodacom launch of the much-vaunted HSDPA (High Speed Download Packet Access) promising higher download speeds than 3G. I’m presently in Durban on business. If Cape Town is Slaapstad, then Durban is in rigor mortis. That notwithstanding, on Sunday (launch day) I called the Vodacom 082155 data call centre to find out how to migrate my current 3G package to HSDPA. None of the automated options addressed my need. Even though I accessed some of them over several calls in the hope that the sneaky feature of ‘if you wish to speak to a consultant - press zero’ would be hidin’ in the woodwork somewhere. No such luck.

Being the inventive creature I am, I even called the 111 Vodacom customer care number and asked to be put through to a real person at 082155. I got automated options again. I tried again several times over the day, thinking that as potential call volumes dropped, humans would step into the breach. It was not to be.

Intrepid me even went into Durban’s Pavilion shopping centre Vodashop thinking they’d know the story. They didn’t. They’d been told they could re-issue 3G-type modem cards to people who’d taken out contracts only from Feb 2006. We ‘grandfather’ adopters are presently ‘stateless people’ and nobody seems to know what to do with us. Which is seriously dof when you consider that if we immediately adopted 3G, chances are we’d be suckers for more of the same with HSDPA.

There’s a learning here. Why not SMS in advance of launch - on the resident SIM card forming part of the 3G modem - your existing 3G clients to give them a heads-up on the new service and clarify how they can migrate to the new offering? In the same way that there’s never been an SMS advising of 3G software or firmware upgrades, Vodacom is failing its clients on the 3G broadband marketing front. Someone needs to kick butt.

I’ve now run out of energy and interest in finding out about the HSDPA offering. I suppose it’s a case once again of the first-to-market curse pioneered by Bill Gates. All stops are pulled out to get in ahead of the competition. Then the consumer is left to take high blood pressure medication as access to the product or service is shrouded in mystery and the actual offering is ‘de-bugged’ on them. Not nice.

Related Tags: Marketing, Advertising, Customer Service, Relationship marketing, Viral marketing

Related Tags: Vodafone

Vodacom's Dual Failure

Come back Joan Joffe! Whither art thou O Dot Field? Why on earth Fathima Beckmann (no pic available) as Group Executive Corporate Communications, Vodacom? She may be the nicest possible person but dear God, if her response to Moneyweb about last week’s Vodacom network signal failure was anything to go by, she’s a media disaster waiting for a place to happen.

When choosing a media spokesperson for a company, it’s not just the technical expertise of that person which should be taken into account. Neither is it their official designation or seniority of status - or the need for an affirmative action voice. What’s paramount is that the person has linguistic intelligence and enjoys fluidity and fluency in the tongue in which they’re going to address the media. And that they understand the cardinal principles of PR issues containment or reputation management. Which are: 1) Acknowledge that there’s a problem, apologise and don’t go circumcising mosquitoes on the exact number of fairies that can actually dance on a mobile phone mast-head. 2) Tell us what you’re doing immediately and short-term to rectify the problem. 3) What are you doing to prevent or minimise the possibility of a recurrence?

If the charming and competent Dot Field has found greener pastures, is indisposed or is unavailable, then why don’t we know about it? In a corporation of the stature of Vodacom there are any number of silver-tongued individuals who could talk to the media in a crunch. Alan Knott-Craig himself is a media whiz, Peter Matlare, a gifted media ‘smoothie’ springs to mind, Pieter Uys the Vodacom COO is empathic, credible and engaging. ‘Empowering’ and growing media spokespeople is one thing – but this is not the way to do it.

So how did Fathima Beckmann get to respond to this issue of the pooped-out signals of last week? Why did she ‘filibuster’ on what time what sector did or didn’t have a signal? Why (if the radio interview transcript is to be evaluated) would Vodacom subject us to someone speaking borderline pidgin English on the issue? This is plain reckless endangerment of the very valuable Vodacom brand name and reputation.

The words and voice of a media spokesperson are the ‘face’ of an organization at crisis time. If you add together your marketing, advertising, communications, PR and promotions budgets – in Vodacom’s case a serious dollop of money – would you really want to put that all at risk in the hands of an incompetent-sounding person? Fathima’s mutilation of the language along with her ‘Can I rather get back to you on that question?’ response, are cringe-inducing faux pas of an unacceptable order.

If I were the brand custodian of Vodacom (AK-C!) I’d do something pronto about this lapse and ensure that it doesn’t happen in a hurry again. As the notoriously irascible Denis Smith of radio fame in this country once said to me: ‘Don’t do on-air rehearsals!’ This was an on-air rehearsal of the most unfortunate kind. Please spare us a repeat broadcast.