Role Archives - understand-culture

Only live to serve

In 1991, Disney produced the movie “Beauty and the Beast,” a film about a prince who is turned into a beast and the young woman who helps return him to human form. Although this movie is set in France, because it was written by Americans for American children, it exemplifies many of the values held in American culture.

In this film, many of the characters are servants, and they have no trouble expressing their desire to serve their master. In fact, at one point in the movie, the servants avow that they “only live to serve.” Nevertheless, no American would ever think of these characters as degraded or less than human – to Americans they are simply helping their customer in the best way they can.

Servitium

Serve: The English term service implies graciousness, helpfulness and to a degree selflessness. To serve is to be humble. Serve stems from the Latin word servitium, which meant the condition of a slave. Service, at its roots, involves one person serving another or several. It is inherently personal.

The term service in the context of American business involves the notion of servitium: to respond to the needs of your customer, to serve that customer personally and individually. But service also anticipates compensation: payment, customer loyalty, growth of the business.

Service is both personal and commercial. They go hand-in-hand. Impersonal service seldom leads to commercial success. Personal service without fair compensation is servitude. And, indeed, some business relationships are so one-sided that the one serving feels more like a slave than a free person.

Personal: Of, relating to, or affecting a particular person; done in person without the intervention of another; carried on between individuals directly; relating to the person or body; relating to an individual or an individual’s character, conduct, motives, or private affairs often in an offensive manner; being rational and self-conscious; of, relating to, or constituting personal property; intended for private use or use by one person. From Latin persona.

Helpful: Of service or assistance, useful.

Selfless: Having no concern for self, unselfish.

Humble: Not proud or haughty, not arrogant or assertive; reflecting, expressing, or offered in a spirit of deference or submission; ranking low in a hierarchy or scale. From Latin humilis low, humble, from humus earth.

Not a consumer’s job

Harvard Business Review. October 31, 2001. Tom Davenport, Business Professor at Babson College: Was Steve Jobs a Good Decision Maker?

„He (Jobs) also didn’t believe in analytical decisions based on extensive market research.“ Quoting The New York Times’ obituary:

„Mr. Jobs’s own research and intuition, not focus groups, were his guide. When asked what market research went into the iPad, Mr. Jobs replied: ‘None. It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want.’”

Steve Jobs was not of German descent. It was known, however, that he had great respect for German design and technology. He and his family, it was reported, had debated for weeks what brand of washer they should choose. His arguments won out. They purchased a Miele.

Consult the customer

Communication with the customer about expectations is a primary role of American business. For example, a senior consultant at a major American strategy consulting firm described collaboration as an attribute that is “built into the very culture of our consulting firm.” New consultants are selected for their ability to understand and respond to the needs of their clients.

The website of a leading strategy consulting firm tells future clients that “custom solutions yield the greatest competitive advantage and value for our clients. We ground each solution in how our client’s organization actually works and in the client’s unique position in the marketplace.”

In order to understand the client’s unique situation and demands, the consultants work side-by-side with the client’s employees and listen to their concerns.

A report from the Center for the Study of Social Policy about customer service describes the complex interplay of factors involved in customer satisfaction. One finding of the report is: “Successful customer service companies listen to, understand, and respond—often in unique and creative ways—to the evolving needs and constantly shifting expectations of their customers.“

Tail wags dog

Germans. Augenhöhe. More consult than serve. Ok, fine. American customers can work with the German approach. Maybe even work better, if the approach is understood by both sides and is applied carefully.

But even if so, it can look and feel to the American customer as if the tail is wagging the dog. The customer is the dog. The German supplier-vendor-consultant is the tail. Germans don’t want to be the tail. Who does? But the American customer is clearly the dog. And that dog doesn’t want to be wagged by its tail, German or any other culture.

Balance customer and supplier

Augenhöhe. Literally eye-level. To be at eye-level with each other. Germans reject any form, even the slightest indication, of a one-sided customer-supplier relationship. One-sided in the sense of imbalance, a working relationship in which the one is master, the other slave.

For Germans, implicit in any business relationship is a transaction, an exchange, a trade. A problem is solved. A need is satisfied. A lack of expertise in a particular area, on a specific question, is provided from the outside. Manufacturing needs better technology. The company needs advice concerning tax law. Another company needs help with marketing, logistics, personnel, product packaging, research and development.

The list of possible business transactions is infinite. People, teams, companies collaborate, work together, because one has something the other needs, and will exchange it for something of value.

Germans are very sensitive to maintaining balance in any form of collaboration. The German customer wants in a supplier, service provider or consultant: someone who insists on working with them at eye-level, who is self-confident, knows her own worth, and rejects any working relationship which can lead to an imbalance.

The German customers want the best possible work results, input, support from suppliers, service providers, and consultants. They do not want those who react immediately to each and every desire, idea, or spontaneous thought they might have, as if the client had issued a purchase order.

Often the customer is not in a position to recognize what is best for them. And every customer is, in turn, a supplier, service provider or consultant to another company in another business relationship. That’s what business means. Today customer, tomorrow supplier.

The Germans would far more prefer to consult than to serve. Consulting is knowledge- / expertise-based. To give advice. Two parties standing at eye-level to each other. Balance. Listen, discuss, decide, act. The one side pays for it. Of course. But for the Germans, the customer is never king. And the supplier, service provider, consultant is never slave.

Masters of their work

Germans – both management and employees – strive to work independently, on their own, with as little supervision as possible. Most importantly, Germans expect of themselves and each other a high degree of mitdenken, of thinking with.

Mitdenken not only reduces the need for management oversight – it also means that management need not get too involved in the details of the work on the tactical level, the how. But can German management fully rely on their employees to do their work in the best interest of the company? Germans answer this questions indirectly with a yes.

Whenever cases are uncovered where Germans employers use technology to monitor their employees’ behaviour and/or performance, there is immediate and loud protest not only from those employees, but from the German public in general.

For Germans, to self-manage, to work independently, means a high level of trust between employer and employee, between team lead and team. For Germans, the permission to work in an independent fashion is a sign of recognition, of ability and trustworthiness.

For German employees, it is a clear sign of recognition when they are given a task to complete on their own. They are proud to take on the task, proud of their ability, regardless of whether management voices praise or offers any kind of monetary benefit.

Through the ability to work independently, to need little management supervision, German employees see themselves less as Diener, those who serve, and more as Berater, as collaborating almost as partners with their manager.

Germans consult. Americans serve.

A big source of misunderstanding between Americans and Germans, rarely made explicit, is about whether business should inherently be customer-centric, supplier-centric, or somehow balanced, as our fourth column in this series explains.

Germans and Americans alike will of course say they care about their customers. But they associated different meanings with that notion. And that often leads to misunderstandings and frustration. American providers of business services proudly offer exactly that: a service. By contrast, German providers view their proposition less as a service and more as a consultation. The difference is subtle, but consequential.

Soup Nazi

The U.S. tv series Seinfeld. Jerry, George and Elaine visit a new soup stand. Jerry explains that the owner is known as the Soup Nazi due to his insistence on a strict manner of behavior while placing an order, but his soups are so outstandingly delicious that the stand is constantly busy.

At the soup stand, George complains about not receiving bread with his meal. When he presses the issue, George’s order is taken away and his money returned. On a subsequent visit, George buys soup (with a warning that he is pushing his luck), but Elaine, having scoffed at Jerry’s advice on how to order, draws the Soup Nazi’s ire and is banned for a year.

Wait, stop ! We’ll let the video tell the rest of the story.

Why this now famous American TV series episode? In the context of German-American collaboration? And as it relates to the topic customer? Well, show it to any Americans working in the Germany-USA space and then ask them what it is like for them as the customer interacting with Germans as the supplier.

Serve the Customer

In many cultures, hospitality – the relationship between a guest and a host – is of great importance. Being considered an inhospitable host is dishonorable to the guest and the local community alike. This idea is similar to the concept of serving a customer in the personal, respectful way that most Americans consumers expect. One example of the importance of this concept is found in the vision of Hilton Hotels: “To fill the earth with the light and warmth of hospitality.”

This idea is not constrained to hotels, however. The president of outdoor supplier L.L.Bean, Chris McCormick, described customer service as a key part of the company’s success: “Superior customer service has always been and always will be the cornerstone of our brand and heritage and an attribute that differentiates us from the rest of the pack. It goes back to L.L.’s Golden Rule of treating customers like human beings.”

In American English, the above quote can be succinctly summarized as: “the customer is always right.” This is a very common phrase that most consumers and businesses treat as an underlying truth in all interactions with customers. Even if the customer is actually wrong, it is up to the service provider to treat the customer with respect, understand his point of view, and offer a solution. Anything short of these expectations will be viewed as bad service.

As one senior consultant at a major American strategy consulting firm put it, “Service is defined completely by the customer.” In the consulting realm and many other industries, customers come with clearly defined needs and expectations. The service provider must understand those expectations and deliver service that is consistent with what the customer expects.

Craig Reid, former President of Operations – Americas at Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts and now CEO at Auberge Resorts, similarly stated that “If customers are buying excellence – and they are the people who define excellence – you’ve constantly got to measure whether they agree with your interpretation of excellence at that particular time. And that definition of excellence evolves constantly.”