Daily Bulletin

UW student wins Fulbright Stephanie Bangarth, a PhD student in history, has become the second Waterloo student ever to receive one of the prestigious Canada-U.S. Fulbright Scholarships. The US$15,000 award will allow her to do doctoral research at an American university for nine months. She's investigating the roots of modern human rights advocacy and the responses of Canadian and American civil rights groups to the internment of people of Japanese ancestry during World War II.

First of the month: retirement day

But there are staff and faculty members who face no September demands: the ones whose long contributions to UW are being celebrated as they officially retire. Today, the first day of August, is the official retirement for at least two such people, the human resources department reports:

• Helen Hirsch, textbook manager in the bookstore, who's been working at UW since March 1977.
• John Holland, a coordinator in the co-op and career services department, who's been a member of the UW staff since February 1985.

• July 1: William McClanahan, stationary engineer in plant operations (and a former president of Canadian Union of Public Employees local 793), on UW's staff since September 1979.
• June 1: Lyn Densch, receptionist and billing clerk in health services, at UW since September 1985.
• June 1: Maria Schutz, custodian in plant operations, at UW since October 1989.
• June 1: Donald Good, electrical repairperson in plant operations, at UW since July 1980.
• Anne Bieth, placement specialist in co-op education and career services, at UW since October 1979.

• Stephen Smith, biology, at UW since 1971, retired February 1.
• Fred Thompson, architecture, at UW since 1969, retired May 1.
• William Corning, psychology, at UW since 1969, retired July 1.
• Brenda Cantar, English, at UW since 1991, retired July 1.

Shop brings entrepreneurship award -- from last week's Gazette

She opened the shop -- specializing in Taiwanese bubble tea -- in the University Plaza almost a year ago, and these days she's still working "24/7, waitressing, mopping, sweeping, accounting, bartending, running for supplies"; she even does windows.

But her efforts have been recognized by the Saint Louis University Entrepreneurship Center, which awarded Song second prize among the Canadian entries in the College and University Entrepreneur Contest. First prize went to a student at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax.

Peter Woolstencroft, associate dean of arts (special programs) nominated Song for the award, which is open to full-time students who own and operate a business. Contestants were required to submit a paper describing how successful the business was over time, the challenges they had faced and overcome, as well as their involvement in the community.

Song was inspired to try her hand at business after tasting bubble tea in Toronto, a couple of years ago. The chilled, flavoured beverage is created from green or black tea, with sweetened tapioca pearls, "like marble-sized gummy bears".

She applied for a bank loan, with her father as guarantor, and opened the business last August. "It was a scary thing, but I knew I could do it."

Her goal in creating the tea shop was not only to introduce the Waterloo community to a great drink, but to offer a relaxed environment without the typical fast food restaurant's 20-minute time limit -- "a place of escape". To that end, magazines, board games and cards are provided for customers, who are welcome to linger over a bubble tea or an assortment of snacks.

"I've tried to create a fusion of East Asian culture," she explains, pointing to the Japanese green tea ice cream, the Cantonese sticky rice, the Korean noodles and the Chinese dumplings on the menu. Song's background is Korean Canadian, but she has designed an atmosphere welcoming for everyone, and is proud to say her clientele is "very multicultural".

That includes the local talent that she encourages to perform at the tea shop, where live concerts, spoken word nights and DJs are featured.

One of the biggest challenges, she admits, in retrospect, has been her youth and inexperience. But while some tried to exploit those limitations, students who stopped in for tea often stayed to lend a hand. UW architecture students helped with the design of the shop and built some of the fixtures, others have done a remake of the menu or revamped the business card.

Song has tried to give something back to the community by hiring students, by running a Christmas food drive, by providing free calligraphy demonstrations at the Canada Day festivities, and by introducing children to East Asian culture at the Global Awareness Day Camp.

After surviving the first year -- especially the darkest hours when only a pep talk from her dad convinced her to keep going -- Song is feeling more optimistic about the future. "One thing I've learned that I'll never let go of: if I sit around and do nothing, nothing will happen," she laughs.

Store under renovation Heather Fawcett, manager of the Variety and Post store in the Student Life Centre, sends word that the store "has closed its doors for renovations for the duration of the term. Stamps and bus tickets are available at the Turnkey desk and we are offering an assortment of our most popular products at the Scoops location. The Scoops mini mart has chocolate, candies, chips, gum, batteries, cigarettes, long distance cards and much more. We are open Monday to Friday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Aussie's (formally the Variety & Post) will open its doors on September 5."

Advice on driving away customers

Kerton, who is also UW's dean of arts, is well known for his research on consumer satisfaction and the financial services sector. He's quoted at length in a recent release from the UW news bureau.

You "screw up" by ignoring bad news from clients, Kerton says. On the other hand, it can be "very profitable for firms to restore the faith of a dissatisfied customer."

He offers this prescription, dubbed "The Seven Deadly Sins", as the sure path to ruin for any business or not-for-profit organization:

• Assume you already know what your customers want. You know your products or services are good, so customers don't really have anything to complain about, right? He cites an study in which 1,500 people were asked if they think the quality of consumer goods is getting better or worse, overall. Of the general population, just 27 per cent said quality is improving. However, when 100 business leaders were asked the same question, 66 per cent believe quality is improving. A similar study in 1998 by the National Quality Institute of 10,300 Canadians produced the same result, says Kerton. "The majority of consumers believe quality is getting worse."
• When it comes to dealing with customer feedback, adopt a DPD Strategy -- Delay, Procrastinate and Defer. Take the complaint, but get incomplete information, then lose it somewhere in the system. Promise anything, but never get back to the customer, and never follow up. Hope that your customer gives up in frustration.
• Fail to create and institute a Customer Complaints and Redress Policy. This way, every complaint is ad hoc and no one in your company knows "what we usually do," Kerton says, so they "are forced to operate in a system vacuum."
• Have a Customer Complaints and Redress Policy but don't tell your staff. "Bankruptcy courts are littered with the corpses of firms who didn't make sure that their front-line troops knew and understood their own customer redress policy and the importance of customer satisfaction."
• Ignore available information from your employees, particularly those who work directly with customers.
• In all your communications to customers, use a strictly legalistic approach. Use big words and long sentences and you will manage to confuse almost everyone. Biggest transgressor under Sin Number Six that Kerton finds commonly is the product or service warranty, which only a lawyer can understand.
• Don't apologize. Don't explain. Don't change. Don't allow staff to solve customer problems, ever. Repeat the first six sins over and over.

But, if the company does anything at all to respond to a customer complaint; "makes any effort to listen and look after that customer, even if there isn't a satisfactory outcome from the customer's point of view," says Kerton, this statistic is reversed -- only one in five will walk.

"Most customer problems aren't deliberate, they're just simple oversights" on the part of company staffers, he concludes. "But you may have to ask your customers for feedback, or you might never learn why they are unhappy. Several studies have shown that it costs far less to please customers than it costs to replace them."

CAR

Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
credmond@uwaterloo.ca | (519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
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