Well served by serving well

Workforce, May, 2002 by Carroll Lachnit

Editors get a lot of e-mail: PR people pitching story ideas, readers offering praise or criticism, plus the usual spam--work-at-home come-ons, Viagra offers, and, recently, an example of the unstoppable "Nigerian letter," a 20-year-old scam that last year separated 16 people from $345,000 of their money, according to the Internet Fraud Complaint Center.

A fair amount of the e-mail that Workforce editors receive comes from consultants, freelance writers, book authors, and HR professionals who would like to publish articles in Workforce. We read their queries, confer, and try to give a prompt yes-or-no answer.

Apparently, not all editors behave that way. Prospective writers often thank us effusively for responding (even when we're turning down their stories). It seems that in some quarters, writers never, ever hear back from editors.

Our response is more than just courtesy. It's also an aspect of customer service and satisfaction, the subject of this month's cover story.

Many of these correspondents are not Workforce's customers--that is, they're not magazine subscribers or registered Web site users. But in our minds, they're part of a community of interest that Workforce serves. When they think about Workforce, I want them to remember that the editors rejected their article nicely, and quickly enough that they could offer it elsewhere, or that we sent them writers' guidelines to help them better understand our editorial needs. And perhaps that will prompt them to subscribe, or register as Web site users, or tell others that not only is Workforce the best source of HR information, but we're responsive and thoughtful people, too.

For a tangible demonstration of the connection between customer satisfaction and business success, check out the American Customer Satisfaction Index, issued quarterly by the University of Michigan Business School and its partners. As the index rises and falls, S&P 500 earnings trend close behind. That's because "a satisfied customer is more profitable than a dissatisfied one," according to a discussion on the index's Web site (www.theacsi.org). "If satisfaction declines, customers become more reluctant to buy unless prices are cut. If satisfaction improves, the opposite is true: customers are more inclined to buy again and are less sensitive to price increases." The customer's experience with your organization--that is, with the people you hire--is pivotal.

In its February 2002 report, ACSI noted that Bank One Corp, which has grown by acquisitions, saw its score fall by nearly 6 percent over last year. As often happens in mergers, the bank reduced its workforce "and customers are complaining about waiting time and that they are not getting enough attention from bank personnel," says Claes Fornell, a University of Michigan Business School professor and chairman of CFI Group, which co-sponsors the index. You don't get a more direct HR-customer satisfaction link than that.

A final word on how Workforce serves its audience: online editor Todd Raphael has won the prestigious 2002 Jesse H. Neal Award for best staff-written editorials--"Think Twice," which appears on the last page of the magazine each month. The award affirms what Workforce does for its customers. And as they say at Rosenbluth International, a customer-service leader featured in this month's cover story, it's been our pleasure.