Waste - racing to the bottom or the top?

Developing our waste processing plant, I am reminded of Seth Godin's blog post: The race to the bottom. In short, we can chose a race to the bottom or a race to the top.

The race to the bottom

This race is pretty clear cut. It involves bigger landfills, older trucks, cutting corners wherever possible to wring every last cent out of the business. Eventually, the last cent wrung out of the business is yourself. 

It assumes that the customer doesn't care what happens to their waste, and is purely driven by price. Of course, once you've created this race then it is self-fulfilling. You have convinced the customer that the only thing that matters is price.

Every market has its own race to the bottom, and every race to the bottom ends up at the bottom. You can only hope that race doesn't consume the whole market. 

In the field of waste management, but also in most other fields, you rely on regulators to protect you against the worst of the race to the bottom. Regulators can even call the race off (if they wish).

The race to the top

This race is also clear. It involves fewer landfills and more waste processing. It is probably more labour intensive as it seeks to extract every last resource from the waste received. Unlike the race to the bottom, it builds new businesses upon its success. 

Reprocessed material adds value and jobs to the economy - a recent report "The Australian Recycling Sector" estimates that

• 0.15 to 0.3% of all Australian jobs are in the recycling
• The sector has annual turnover of between $6-10 billion dollars, of which more than half is from the sale of recover materials
• A tonne of waste recycled creates more jobs than a tonne of waste landfilled

This race assumes that customers ultimately want good service, and are prepared to pay a little above the bottom of the market to receive it. Sell a vision and you will be surprised what you bring with you. Of course, it may be that the customers need some prodding.

For example, if you are building a waste processing plant, your key customers are waste collectors. Their customers are other businesses who sell, ultimately, to consumers. And consumers can be very influential in persuading businesses to lift their game. Selling the vision should not be confined to your immediate customers, but rather across all of society. It is the grand narrative that you want people to buy, not a selfish little "what's in it for me".

The race to the top is all but untouched by the regulator, but rather driven on by your customers and your ability to keep innovating.

Where would you rather be?

Long term, there is only one race you want to be in. The race to the bottom is easy. It is also a race to your own destruction. Sure, not now, but in a few years time (depending on the speed of change in the market).

The race to the top is hard. It requires a great ability to tell the story. It needs supporters, fans, followers. It needs a virtuous cycle of creating people who care, who in turn create more people who care. 

For all of this, the race to the top is the only sustainable race. When the bottom racers have collapsed, spent after slugging it out in the ditch, you remain strong and profitable.

And what do I do?

It is pretty straightforward - you can just keep spreading the word. Keep up your belief that the wrong thing is wrong, no matter how much people seek to persuade you otherwise. 

This and skim across my blog from time to time. In between digressing through some personal ramblings, I hope that the blog can keep inspiring ideas on what is right, what is possible, and how the bad can be replaced with the good.

Is good customer service in waste facilities a crazy idea?

I blogged a few days ago around customer service in waste management, and to be honest, was a bit fixated on customer service as it applies in a B2B context. There is, however, another whole conversation to be had on customer service in the consumer space at waste facilities.

The horror

We've probably all been there. You go for the once in a blue moon trip to the tip. You're towing a trailer for the first time in a year or two, half lost, and you stumble upon the entrance. 

You are then struck by a barrage of signs. Do this. Don't do that. Waivers of liability. Fees, fine print and a scowling attendant who looks at you like you're the worst form of idiot. And you haven't even opened your mouth yet.

A barrage of signs, courtesy of HuffPost

Depending on your personality, you rustle up your best "I know what I'm doing" swagger, hoping like hell you'll bluff your way through. Or you go all subservient and meekly ask what happens next. Doesn't really matter, because you then get interrogated about what is in the load, with no clues about what matters. And so you explain that you've got your husband's old vinyl suit (lively little number that was), a couple of tree branches and a couch.

You may then get an inspection, at which point the attendant uncovers a tin of paint and a couple of tyres that you've tried to smuggle in. Which, if you'd known they wanted to know about, you would have disclosed. And you then get charged some ridiculous amount for an arbitrary interpretation of the fees that you can't read anyway. And you're sent on your way to tip.

It doesn't get better at the tip site. You drive nervously down a dodgy goat track hoping you're not trespassing, before you end up with a whole heap of other non-trespassers. Another attendant wanders over and shows you the needle's eye you are to reverse your trailer through, then wanders off (perhaps to film it for "world's greatest reversing idiots"). At which point you break out into a cold sweat, and finally get in there after causing a minor riot among the people waiting.

So you unload. By yourself. Doesn't matter how heavy anything is, and by this point you just want it gone. Doesn't matter that the old couch is ok. Don't care about separating out branches from general waste. Just get it off this trailer so I can flee far from here. Which you do, and only return once you've forgotten the whole experience.

The vision

As I'm wont to say, it doesn't have to be thus.

Imagine if the tip was a warehouse in an industrial part of town, but instead of looking like a tip, it looked more like a drive through bottle shop. One big, simple sign showing prices and not much more. There are only a few prices. 

You drive in, an attendant walks over to you and doesn't bother with the interrogation. They just say hello and ask if you'd like a hand unloading. Which of course you do, and they bring a crate over to the car. And you both unload, together. No reversing, no crazy questions, just good old fashioned service.

Even better, the attendant helps to separate out the stuff that is still ok. So the couch is put to one side. The cardboard is separated with you. The paint and tyres are put to one side. The crate for rubbish remains pretty empty. All the while the attendant chats to you, you know how the place works and you know what the fee is going to be. When it's all done, you're charged the appropriate fee, paying via a mobile device and you're free to go.

But you don't want to go. Because there is an awesome little shop and cafe, where all the stuff that was separated out from everybody else is available for sale. And everything is so, so cheap.  So you drive your car (and trailer) to a parking bay, get yourself a coffee and browse. Either walking around or using one of many iPads at the tables. Congratulating yourself on a job well done, and looking for an excuse to return. Maybe all of the kids' stuff being stored in the back room? 

How could you not love this service? 

It is nothing more (nor less) than rethinking the waste facility so that it serves the needs of the customer. Not the needs of efficient bulk handling. Which, to be fair to the attendants, discourage them from helping.

Is customer service in waste facilities a crazy notion?

Customer service matters in waste

Three experiences over the past few weeks came to a head today, and reminded me of the absolutely critical importance of customer service. Two bad, and one great. The great one showed just how bad the bad was. All are in the waste industry.

First of all the bad. No names.

The first bad experience

The first was the supplier of some plant to our transfer station. I thought that I had engaged him to give me a turnkey solution that involved a piece of mechanical equipment and some site works. He thought (correctly, as it turns out) that he was only contracted to supply and install the equipment. So I had my first shock. However, he said he could sort out the site works. In fact, he'd prefer to do this himself and would get back to us with a quote.

The next shock came a few days after the install when I was hit with a bill for extra works to install the plant. This was not an insignificant bill. All of it justifiable, but not justified in my view.

The final shock came when I next met with the contractor, expecting a quote and a quick turnaround. Turns out he had thought about it a bit more, and wasn't interested in the site works after all. We learned this after almost two weeks of waiting.

So we are left with some kit on site that we can't use, we've lost a few weeks in the process, and all along the contractor has been in the right, but totally in the wrong. You see, the contractor seems to think I'm after their piece of plant. I'm not. I want the solution the plant offers. I didn't get it.

The second bad experience

My next experience was to do with a conference where I'm presenting. Presenting at a conference requires work. You have to think about what to say, you have to write the paper, you have to prepare your presentation, you have to present. It's several weeks of work.

All of this is a significant investment. All of which is fine in the context of an investment in your industry, an investment in yourself.

The shock was to then learn that I get to pay the full conference registration fee. Presenters, without whom there is no conference, pay the same as the punter sitting up the back passively soaking it up. The punter who pays the fees, turns up in the morning, goes home in the evening and makes no further investment in the conference.

It's not a big deal financially - the fee is not huge. But I'm left feeling that I'm being exploited. I now have no ownership in the deal, I don't care if the conference succeeds or fails. And there is no chance that I'll be investing any more effort in promoting this conference. The conference organisers have made enough money off my work.

The good experience

The nice experience was actually a few weeks ago. It involved The Creative Arts House, a brand creation agency. I turned up to discuss how we might develop a brand around our work, which has been running along for decades in a pretty lacklustre fashion.

The surprise was that Clare and Heather had done their homework. We sat around a table, and they had our corporate documents (all easily found on our website) before them. They then proceeded to tell me what they liked about us, and we could cut straight past the preamble and get into the business.

That is such a small thing, but such an awesome thing. And I am delighted to promote their services as a result.

What is the lesson?

The lesson from this is pretty straightforward. Customer service matters. Even for companies in waste management. It matters for customers of waste management outfits. And customer service is not about selling your service, but about meeting your customer's needs.

It doesn't matter if you have the best product on the market, without meeting your customer's needs, the customer just feels shafted. Especially if you have the best product. Conversely, putting yourself in the customer's shoes increases the chances that you will delight the customer and build immense loyalty.

That must matter.

The language of waste

It is not common to hear people talk of "language" and "waste", but when it happens, the discussion is usually around how we should rename to remove "waste" connotations.

"Tips" become "landfills", "incinerators" become "waste to energy" (or "energy from waste"), "rubbish bins" become "MGBs" (Mobile Garbage Bins). And, in the best of all, "waste" becomes a "resource", "waste processing plants" become "resource recovery facilities".

The logic here is Orwellian. Just as in Nineteen Eighty-Four, where the Ministry responsible for war is the Ministry of Peace, we pretend that a new label on rubbish changes its being. There is some sort of alchemy going on here, a collapsing of labels to things. A belief that, if you call rubbish a resource then it actually becomes a resource. And people treat it as such.

They don't. Because it isn't a resource. At least not to them. If it was, they wouldn't be throwing it out. To state the obvious, a resource is something with value to the holder. Rubbish is something with no value. To the holder.

Perhaps we should forgive a bit of Orwell in our lives. Perhaps we can give a bit of a nod and chuckle, but tell ourselves that from the absurdity comes some sense. Calling waste a resource will lead to enough people treating it as a resource.

Perhaps some do. In fact, some certainly do. But for most, what doublespeak does is create a barrier of understanding between the communicator and the audience. It creates a new language, where people have to first work out what is intended by "MGB" (or indeed, MRB - Mobile Recycling Bin), and only then can they process the message.

Most don't get that far. MGB? Don't have one of them, not for me. Resource recovery? Not for me, I don't work in the mines. And the rejection isn't even that explicit.

Creating a new jargon around waste is just what waste does not need. Recycling has enough messages on enough levels. It does not need a new filter of misunderstanding.

How about listening to your customers, and using their language? They persist in calling your landfill a tip? Cool, call it "the tip", and then explain how a modern tip is vastly different to an old tip. They want to know what happens with their recyclables? Don't say they go through a Materials Recovery Facility - use their language. That might be "waste factory". Or "waste processing plant". Or something else. Use whatever your customers use when they describe it to their mates.

At the end of the day, language should not be used to create barriers to communication. It should enable communication. Keep the jargon for technical journals, if you must, but talk true when you talk to those using your services. They are your customers and they deserve better.