I never expected a professional basketball player to be the
inspiration for a lesson in client service.
In business there’s an old adage: you get what you measure. For
example, if a company is measuring how many days it has gone without a safety
incident, efficiency may suffer. Workers may do things more slowly or with
undue care because moving quickly and having an accident would ruin the
company’s safety record. So the company measures safety and it gets safety; but at the expense of
efficiency.
When negotiating contracts with clients, I see this challenge
arise when we are developing the service level agreement. This is the part of the contract that lays out how the parties will measure the performance of the
services, such as system uptime; how fast we respond to issues; or number of
transactions processed per day.
I take a great deal of care discussing service levels with clients
because sometimes what the client asks to measure will not reflect how well the
delivery team is doing. The client may complain that the services are
inefficient, and that may be because we’re measuring safety! So I strive to focus the measurements on what matters most to the client’s desired business outcomes.
This week I smiled when I read a story about a decision NBA player
Moe Harkless made in the last days of the season. Harkless plays for the
Portland Trailblazers and has a contract with certain performance incentives. One
of them is a payment of $500,000 if his 3-point shooting percentage is at least
35% for the season. On April 4, Harkless decided: No more threes. Why? His
percentage for the season stood at 35.05%. One missed 3-pointer would take his
average below 35% and cost him a half-million dollars. That’s an expensive
brick!
Consider that Harkless was not being measured on number of games
won. So the Trailblazers could lose a game without consequence to Harkless
because that’s not how he’s measured. Once he hit 35% he’s met his service
level. And the owners got what they measured, 35% 3-point accuracy, even though
what they really want is wins! The 3-point clause did not make Harkless less
competitive, however. He switched to driving to the basket. He was still going
to take shots; just no more threes.
So before you and the client leverage some form contract or
previous deal to measure delivery performance, have a conversation. What
matters to the employees? What matters to leadership? What determines business
success? Measure those things that will help your client feel like they are
“winning” in their business. Because they’ll get what they measure.
