Maurilio Amorim

Month: July 2012

  • What Can Apple Teach the Church about Dealing with People in Crisis?

    Great customer service is a powerful thing. When a brand that’s built on concepts such as “simple, easy, and powerful” delivers on its promise, there’s joy in the heart of the consumer and good will abounds for a long time. Today one of our Mac laptops at the office crashed. It’s a machine. It’s bound to happen sooner or later, but it always seems to happen at the most inopportune of times. However,  Mac’s customer support was stellar. I wish churches and Christian organizations would learn from Apple on how to deal with people in crisis.

    Our 3-year old Macbook’s hard drive crashed. I diagnosed it by the cow-like sound the poor drive made as it was trying unsuccessfully to spin. It needed to be fixed asap. One local vendor wanted $75 to “put us on the front of the line” for repairs. Instead I went to the Apple website, signed up for an appointment at the Genius Bar (Mac’s in-store repair service) at which time the problem would be reviewed and diagnosed just two hours after I had scheduled the appointment, and hoped Apple would be able to help me within 24 hours.

    I had my computer fixed 18 minutes after entering the store, and it was free.

    It was the easiest, friendliest, and most efficient service team I had seen in a long time. Even though the store was full of people, my name welcomed me on the electronic board as I arrived on time for my appointment. The helpful “genius” plugged in a cable that in a matter of a few seconds gave him the same diagnose: a bad hard drive. He told me that even though the computer was out of warranty, Mac’s quality assurance would replace the hard drive (which came preloaded with the operating system) for free.

    For all practical purposes, when your computer/phone is not working, your life is not working. Ok, so it’s not a life-or-death crisis, but a work-computer down means you can’t do jack. If you get paid by billable hours, then every hour you don’t work, you don’t get paid.  How much more seriously should professional Christians (church and ministry leaders) deal with real-life crises of those who need them? Some are doing a great job responding and even anticipating such events. One organization that comes to mind is Soles4Souls led by my good friend Wayne Elsey. Their response time and ability to help has always impressed me.

    But for the most part, I find churches and Christian organizations ill prepared to help and resource those who need them the  most. If your brand promise is to share the good news of Jesus as well as His light with the world, you better be ready to help those in crisis, because it is at that point that they’ll decide whether you’re for real or just full of it. It’s not that churches don’t want to serve others. I believe most do. But unless there’s a working system in place to streamline the process, no organization will succeed in proving sustainable help. Intentions are of no help without systems to service them. Apple figured out a simple and effective system to help their customers. I wish Christians would learn from them.

    What Christian organization have you seen perform at a level of excellence? What are they doing well?

  • How I Would Approach My Job as a CIO

    CIOs (Chief Information Officers) have a big problem. The pace of change in technology is mind numbing. With the advent of the App store and the exponential proliferation of apps for just about anything imaginable, organizations are having a tough time managing their Information Technology infrastructure. I remember the days when Microsoft software upgrades were done annually and operating systems lasted sometimes two or three years before a new release would be officially support by the IT department. Now it’s down to a daily occurrence. New software, apps, sites, productivity tools are pouring out at us like a tsunami that cannot be stopped.

    The New CIO

    Since April, 50,000 new apps were added to the App store, making it a total number of 650,000 apps and growing. That doesn’t even count the apps that are being created for the Android devices. If you are the CIO of your organization, or head of IT your life is more chaotic than ever before. IT professionals are dealing with security issues, compatibility, scalability and internal bandwidth to deal with the ever clamoring demands from their internal customers who want the latest version of the software-du-jour that they just cannot live without. And most of the time they have a point. Why wait 6 months for the internal team to build a marketing or productivity  app or microsite instead of buying something that can be downloaded quickly and be operational in a few hours with a very small financial investment?

    This is a losing battle over complete control of all things digital. Most everything today is digital–no, everything is. If I were in charge of IT here is how I would managed it:

    Change the way I see my job. You can no longer control everything digital. If you try, you’ll strangle the organizational growth, lose your job or both. Look as your job as facilitate change and not stop it.

    Figure out new priorities. Data integrity and security are your primary concerns, but systems integration is the new normal. It’s a part of doing business. You can no longer be an island and develop all your tools internally and manage all your digital assets with the in-house IT team. It’s just no longer financially feasible.

    Think API (application protocol interface). Make sure your internal system can talk easily with the outside world. If you have a simple API then you can collect, manage and send out data efficiently. Your business’ success depends more and more on how fluid you can share your data across multiple platforms and devices. Instead of thinking of ways to keep people out, think how you let them interface with you safely and easily.

    What’s your organization’s biggest challenge with IT ?

  • Dealing with Difficult People: The Disrespectful Jerk

    There’s nothing more difficult than dealing with a friend or client who is negative, often disrespectful, and yet completely unaware of his behavior.   In my experience, people who are insecure are also not self-aware. So a heart-to-heart about their self-centered ways usually doesn’t work. They will generally deflect that to you and try to play the victim–which is their preferred position. Sometimes they will apologize not because they think they have done something wrong, but because they think you are mad at them and they want to be back in your good graces. It’s not “I’m sorry I have wronged you,” as much as it is “I’m sorry you feel that way.” See the subtle and yet important difference? Here’s my approach:

    Jerk

    So we need to break the cycle of abuse, and the only way I have been able to do that is to wait until another “infraction” happens. Talking about the past seldom works because of the insecurity and the distorted perception of events. The moment it happens: a snide remark or a slight put down, you need to take control of the conversation in the most calm and rational way possible. Stop it in its tracks. I have said something like this before:
    “Your last comment bothered me.” He will look puzzled and say “Why?”.  And then you need to be honest and calm and let him know why his words were disrespectful. “I was just kidding.” is often the cheap way out.

    “It doesn’t matter if were you kidding or not, the impact is the same on me. As a matter of fact, these types of disrespectful comments have hurt my feelings for a while now. I value our relationship and want to make sure you know that it bothers me.” He can either say “I’m sorry, I had no idea.” or he can blow you off and tell you that you are making too much out of nothing.

    The next time it happens, you do the same thing. If he is not able to see the point, that should be a good indicator that you either accept the status quo and allow for the abuse to continue, or you walk away from the relationship.

    How have you dealt with the disrespectful jerks in your life?

  • Fixing Your Image Problem

    Sometimes your best PR and marketing campaign is not telling everyone of about your “new and improved” product, which, by the way, are the two most over used and no longer effective words in marketing. People don’t really believe that the new and improved is necessarily better than the old. Think about it. What’s your reaction when you see a label that touts that?

    image perception pizza sucks

    Late in  2009 Domino’s pizza had a massive PR nightmare in its hands. Thirty-second spots on national television featured Domino’s own employees saying things like “the sauce tastes like ketchup,” and “the pizza crust tastes like cardboard to me.” The spots were excerpts from “Pizza Turn Around,” a four-minute documentary about the company’s two-year battle to re-invent a better pie…commissioned by Domino’s itself.

    The “our pizza sucks” campaign worked. After the episodes aired, Domino’s posted a 14.3 percentage increase in sales per store–a record for the fast food industry. And since 2011, the company’s earning have soared another 20 percent to $105.4 million on revenues of $1.65 billion (up 5 percent).

    Domino’s could have taken the safe route and launched their new and improved pie by hiring the best food stylist in the business (yes, there are people who make a living by “styling” food for photo and video shoots) and proclaiming their new and better pizza. Instead they told the truth and exposed its issues to a large group of people who might not even had known about the company’s negative perception.

    Could telling the truth in a blunt and open way, help your brand? Well, first I assume that you have both identified and fixed the problem. Otherwise you risk losing even more ground by creating a promise you cannot deliver on.

    Can you see an ad from a church that says “Boring No More! Come try out our new preacher. We promise you won’t fall asleep.”

    Think about your organization. How would this approach help you grow?