Uncommon Service: Putting Customer Service at the Core of Your Business

I was out jogging today and listening to some podcasts. I listened to two industrial psychology professors on separate podcasts contradict each other. One thought that working 9-to-5 with only minimal micro-breaks the best way for increasing vitality at work. The other thought the exact opposite: that the human brain cannot mono-focus for long and needs to multi-task, for instance, by taking small Facebook breaks.

I then listened to a podcast on customer service. At first I thought it would be the typical cliches about "going the extra mile". In fact, the two psychology professors interviewed thought the following:

• "Heroic" customer service is counter-productive because, by the fact that it is heroic, you cannot easily repeat it. 
• Companies that succeed at customer service do so because they have work steps and ways of doing things that are repeated, and that everyone does. It becomes ingrained in employee behavior, and thus does not have to be "heroic". Because everyone does it, it is also not hit-or-miss, but automatic. 

Their book is called: Uncoomon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business by Frances Frei and Anne Morris

If you think  of an industry that most people now hate, the airline industry, there are, according to the authors, two airlines that are not hated, and in fact liked, and there are also two airlines that are profitable. Those two airlines are the same. They are Southwest, and Virgin America. Most Americans hate the other airlines. I personally "hate" United, but I like American. But why ? Is it because United only hires jerks and frustrated people who want to provide bad service ? Of course not. It is because United does not have processes in place to make good service routine. Southwest and Virgin American do. 

Thus, it makes no sense, according to the authors, to exhort employees to "try harder" or provide "heroic" service. What you need are managers who put automatic processes in place, that ensure good service. 

One of the more interesting ideas is that you not only train employees, but also your customers. Think of Starbucks. When you go in - as I often do - and order a "medium coffee", they will not correct you or berate you by saying, "no we call that a venti". They repeat your order, but in *their* lingo, so they will say loudly "venti", so that all the other customers in line can also hear it. This in effect trains the customer to contribute to the unity of their products and work processes. Or think of a car rental company that requires you to fuel up and wash the rental car, before returning it. What they in effect are doing is getting you to be part of their work processes and do some of the work. 

Pretty neat idea !

Translators are Copywriters

Translators are copywriters. This might sound a bit odd at first, but I think I can prove it to you. (A copywriter is defined as "a person who writes the text of advertisements or publicity material"). We translators need to think of ourselves (also) as copywriters. And here is why...

I ran across an ad in The Economist this week that I am reasonably sure was translated, but not by a native speaker of English. The text appeared in English, and I deconstruct it here: http://www.econtranslator.com/

It amazes me that companies (and governments) have advertisements made for major magazines (costing no doubt thousands of euros), but rely on non-native copywriters and translators. What results is - as I describe in the link above - far below optimal, and far less effective than it could have been.

Only the top companies really get this. I guess if they get it, that makes them a top company, too. I doubt that Apple just hands its ads to anyone. I doubt that major banks do, especially in today's difficult times. I really doubt that Apple would scrimp and pay less to get bad copy.

Why risk sending the wrong message, when you can send the right message ?

"The Most Important Thing I Learned at Harvard Business School"

What do customers want ? James Allworth, in his essay in the "Harvard Business Review", says that the most important thing he learned at Harvard Business School was to see things through the other person's eyes. Another word for that is empathy.

You can read the full essay here: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/05/empathy_the_most_valuable_thing_they_t.html

He states that he came into Harvard thinking that he had "all the answers", but he quickly realized that other students, who held opposite views, were just as right, or more right than he was. Dogma loses, and empathy wins, as he puts it. I like to think that one reason America won World War II was that leaders like Dwight Eisenhower were willing to listen to opposing views. Hitler wasn't.

Companies fail when the leadership is dogmatic and lacks empathy. When the company does not see things through the eyes of the customer. The real question is not "what can I sell you ?", but "what do you need or want to do ?". As he points out, companies like Blockbuster got that massively wrong. Apple got it right, because Steve Jobs just always asked himself, "what do people want ?".

As Allworth puts it:

"The place for me, however, where an appreciation of empathy is most undervalued, is in business. The potential upside for those in business who are able to be empathetic is huge, and is eloquently described in Professor Clay Christensen's jobs-to-be-done theory. Understanding that people don't buy things because of their demographics — nobody buys something because they're a 25-30 year old white male with a college degree — but rather, because they go about living their life and some situation arises in which they need to solve a problem... and so they "hire" a product to do the job. This is a big "ah ha" to many folks when they first hear it; but when you really boil it down, the true power of this is in giving people in business a frame with which to exercise empathy. In fact, both Akio Morita of Sony and Steve Jobs were famous for never commissioning market research — instead, they'd just walk around the world watching what people did. They'd put themselves in the shoes of their customers.

And for those businesses whose executives are incapable of it? Well, they are subject to the ultimate stick — disruption. No better example of this exists than the story of Blockbuster and its competitive tangle with Netflix."

As a translator, I like to put this into practice by not thinking: this is what I want to sell you. But rather: what do you need done ? What are you trying to accomplish, and how can I help you do that ? 

Handing Out and Dealing with Criticism

I promised I would blog about this, so here it is.

All translators experience a client editing their work, criticizing it, critiquing it, or sometimes even tearing it up and saying, "this is no good".

The real question is not how to stop that (because that is almost impossible), but rather, how best to deal with it. From both the client side (the person paying for the work), and from the translator or writer side (the person doing the work).

There are several reasons why a client might send back a translation, and they are:

• The formatting is bad
• The formatting is slightly bad, from the client point of view
• The client doesn't like the style used by the translator (British vs. American English, etc., passive voice vs. active voice, etc.)
• The client has a company glossary that the translator did not follow
• The client has a style guide that the translator did not follow
• There are real errors of content in the translation (June 15th written as July 15th, etc.)
• The client doesn't want to pay the translator, for whatever reason, and is inventing excuses to either not pay, or to get a discount 

All of these are possible. I would say that the first thing to do is decide which one of these it is. Most of them can just be edited and fixed, rather quickly. In fact, editing should be thought of as an integral part of the translation process. I can't emphasize this enough. All too often, a text that a client took 4 months preparing is expected to be "perfectly" translated in 2 days. This is unrealistic, especially if the text is longer than a few pages. This is not always possible, but it is an ideal that we should not forget. 

I also disagree that there is such a thing as a "perfect" translation. Just as there is no such thing as the perfect painting of a river, there is no such thing as a "perfect" translation. 

If the painter had left out the river, let's say, then that is a content error and a "failure to render the subject". Stylistic errors are different. As David Bellos, the head of the Princeton Translation Center puts it, "translation is not wrong the way a bank statement is wrong". "Translation is more like oil painting". And 8 different painters will have 8 different ideas of what is "good translation". This is also why most translators don't and can't really agree on what is "the right translation". 

So from the client point of view, perfection should not be the aim. What should be the aim is usability and error reduction. Also, the client should - ideally - plan not just for enough time for translation, but also for editing, and should expect edits to be sent to the translator. It should not be thought of as a "one-off" in which the translator gets everything "right" the first time, and there are no follow-up edits or questions. 

From the translator point of view, I think that the David Bellos notion that we are not creating "right" translations the way that a bank statement is right, but rather, oil paintings is very, very important. The job is to render correctly, but style always plays a big role. And many edits are stylistic edits, not content edits. 

Also, from a psychological point of view, it is dangerous to identify oneself too much with one's work. As they say in the software industry, "you are not your code". Your self worth is not directly linked to what you make. If you realize this, you will relax and also produce better work.

In fact, Stanford's Carol Dweck has written a very important book about mindset, called "Mindset" (http://mindsetonline.com/). In it, she differentiates between: 

• The fixed mindset, which states that one is either good or bad at something, and 
• The growth mindset, in which one's performance is used as a stimulus to do better next time, and to grow in one's skills. 

From her own studies and research, Dr. Dweck has found that people are vastly happier and more successful if they don't have a fixed mindset, but a growth mindset. 

Think of a chess player with a fixed mindset. He loses and then gives up, saying, "I am no good at chess". Now think of a chess player with a growth mindset, who loses and says, "I did poorly today, but am learning to get better". Which mindset do you think is better ? This also applies in every area of work. 

I highly suggest that translators and authors have a growth mindset. 

Do You Know Your Translator ? Relationship Translation

I was reading a book put out by The Economist today and ran into an interesting concept. The concept was from finance, and the author was talking about what caused the 2008 financial crisis. One factor (not the only one, of course) was what he called the change from "relationship banking", to "arms-length banking".

What is the difference ? Relationship banking was when borrowers knew their banker personally. Arms-length banking is far less personal, at arms length, globalized, and is, as the name suggests, between people who really don't know each other. Think: the Wall Street bond trader selling a packaged securitized debt instrument to a buyer in Thailand he has never met.

The original concept came from a book written by Paul Seabright, who teaches in France. His book was about trust in business and how interpersonal trust keeps the business world (mostly) afloat. Seabright's book is called "The Company of Strangers", and you can read the review of it here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Company-Strangers-Natural-Economic/dp/0691146462/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1336666381&sr=8-2

How is it that we trust each other in life and in business ? Why do you tip in a restaurant you know you will never go back to ? Why do you trust that truck to stop on red, when you cross ? Why do you trust a translator to do a good job, or a client to pay ? Because, as Seabright states, we mostly do trust each other. That is how society functions and how business works. There are also penalties, both professionally (reputation) and legally (prison) for people who flout the rules.

But it also got me thinking about how the translation industry is also becoming "securitized". A big part of the translation industry now is about "slicing and dicing" texts. The big "translation mills" do this. And what could be more "arms-length" than sending translations around the world to armies of anonymous translators, who you as the client don't know and can't know ?

"I am here to slice and dice your text. Trust me". 

Do you know your translator ? And why not ?

Maybe the way forward in the translation market, and also in the finance world, at least for a part of the market, is to abandon arms-length, de-personalized relationships, and get back to knowing each other, back to relationship translation.

The Economist Style Guide

I recently picked up a hardback copy of "The Economist Style Guide" at a local English bookstore here in Munich. This is my review of it.

Style guides are used by publishing houses, media companies, and companies to prescribe a certain style of use of language, to make the language used internally, unified. At the same time, as "The Economist Style Guide" (I will refer to it from here on out as "the guide" points out, it is not designed to crush individuality. Every writer writes differently. The goal is unity, not a kind of crushing uniformity.

One of the main points is that writing should be straightforward. Mark Twain is quoted in the guide on what a good writer does, and does not do: "At times he may indulge himself with a long one [a long sentence], but he will make sure that there are no folds in it, no vaguenesses, no parenthetical interruptions of its view as a whole; when he has done with it, it won't be a sea serpent with half its arches under the water; it will be a torch-lit procession".

This is the very definition of good writing in English. In general, short and straight sentences are better than long and convoluted ones.

The guide also lists George Orwell's rules of writing English, from "Politics and the English Language". They are so important, I will list them here:

• Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print (modern examples: "go the whole nine yards", "moving forward", grow the business"). 
• Never use a long word when a short one will do 
• If it is possible to cut out a word, cut it out
• Never use the passive when you can use the active
• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent (policeman, not: community security coordinator)
• Break any of these rules sooner than say something outright barbarous

The guide has a good presentation of American English vs. British English. In general, the guide states that American English tends to be more "demonstrative", and direct. British English tends to be a bit more round-about and flowery. 

American English tends to use more long composite words than British English, which tends to separate words more and use hyphens (highborn vs. high-born). 

The guide contains a good presentation of proofreading and the marks used to do it. I noted that the guide states that editing on a computer screen is a lot different than editing on paper. On paper, you have a sense of what has been edited and finality. On the screen, you don't and you can get into "editing-til-the-cows-come-home mode". 

There is a good presentation on politically correct language (don't offend, but also don't invent sensitivities where they don't exist). Coloured is the right term for people of mixed races in South Africa, but is offensive mostly, if used in the United States. 

Some surprises: 

• brokerage is what a stockbroking firm does, not what it is
• populace means the common people, not the population
• demography means the study of population trends (not: demographics)
• federalism in America means states' rights; in Europe it mostly means centralized state power (i.e. the opposite)
• liberal in Europe means someone who supports individual rights and free markets; in the U.S. it means someone who supports FDR's New Deal and the 1960s reforms of Lyndon Johnson
• gender is not the same as sex. You can choose a gender, not a sex. "Gender studies probably means feminism"
• luxurious is different than luxuriant: a homeless man can have a luxuriant beard, but does not live a luxurious lifestyle
• immolate means to sacrifice, not to burn
• moot means arguable or open to debate
• Farsi is the term used in Iran for the language spoken there; Persian is the English word for it. 
• Not all Latin Americans are Hispanic. People in Mexico are, those in Brazil are not. 
• Positive means: without a doubt, definitely laid down. It does not mean good. (a positive finding, not a positive day)
• propaganda is any campaign to spread a belief, not just negative and lying ones

I have to say that I love The Economist Style Guide. My English has already improved a bit by using it, and I suggest it to anyone who works with English. 

The Top 5 Translation Myths

I wanted to update this. I wrote about this before, but because thinking evolves, like everything else, I like to update it. So here it is, the Top 5 myths about translation:

1. Machines will soon replace the human translator. While Google Translate is good in some applications, it still is just a tool, and the best translators see it that way. In fact, some of the highest-paid and best translators that I know of don't use machines at all to translate, because they know they don't need them. Google, when it has media texts of its own to translate, does not rely on Google Translate, its own machine translation tool. But if I am Spain, and need to read a menu, and sort of figure out what it says, machine translation can help me.

2. To get quality, you need to hire a big translation company. This is absolutely not true. Again, some of the best, most successful translators I know are one-person operations. I know of a woman who translates for Fortune 500 companies in Europe and who is a one-person shop, or at most, works in a small team of translators. These translators have years of experience and subject matter knowledge, and they sometimes don't even have a website. The big "translation mills" that have 1-800 numbers on their site and a photo of a young, multi-ethnic team, have perpetuated the myth that translation has to involve big spending on IT and CAT tools and memory. But the best translators have proven otherwise. Fortune 500 companies don't sell their advertising jobs to the company with the biggest investment in IT and "memory", and teams of hundreds of writers. They sell their advertising job to the best minds and the most experienced writers. And that can be one or two people in a small office, on their Macs.

"Can I take a bathroom break, now ?"

3. Being bi-lingual is enough to translate, and to judge translation quality into a foreign language. Oh.My.God. This one is really wrong, and is a pernicious myth. I have lived in Germany for almost ten years and am fully fluent and can read any text in German, but I still have a hard time judging if the German "sounds right". Only a native speaker who writes well and reads well can do that. The notion that a non-native speaker of English can tell if English is good and well translated is a myth, and a dangerous one. You need an expert in that mother tongue.

"Thumbs up to that great American English text !"

4. Translation is not a "real" profession. Well, you can really do any profession well or not (I like the Abraham Lincoln quote: "Whatever you are, be a good one"). You can be a really good lawyer, or a really crappy one. It is the same with translation. As they say in the military, "you get out of it what you put into it". Hang out with the "bottom-feeder" agencies that outsource their translation work to Third World countries, and you start to be like them and think like them. Hang out and benchmark yourself against the pros, the best translators, and you become like them. Your choice. The best translators think of themselves as brands and as subject matter writers. They are sometimes even treated like stars. Well, at least within the profession. But it takes time and it takes work.

5. You need to buy TRADOS to work as a translator. (TRADOS is a computer-assisted translation tool). No. Let's just leave it at that.