Lucy Lee on growth
“In the service industry we need to know how to lead people in being good service staff. If you want your people to be nice to customers, be nice to them first.”
“Calculate the future”
If it’s Friday night in Taiwan and you’re looking for Lucy Lee, there’s only one place you’re likely to find her. At the airport. But she’s not there to embark on a weekend getaway or even to pick up an out-of-town visitor. She’s there to pack and move boxes alongside the individuals who work at TNT Express Taiwan’s gateway operations.
Lee also attends the weekly meetings of pick-up-and-delivery drivers. At each meeting she goes over some key performance indicators (KPIs), such as the number of packages delivered in perfect condition, and new business targets. But her presence at the airport and at the weekly drivers meetings is more about “demonstrating customer focus” than it is about numbers and paperwork. “I go to the airport to demonstrate the right way to handle packages, to show how TNT cares for our customers’ goods,” she says. And her real reason for attending the drivers meetings is simply “to interact with employees—to talk with them, to smile at them—and to show them how to pass on that consideration to our customers.”
A smile may seem like an unlikely business tool, especially in Taiwan where the economy is flattening as many companies move their operations to mainland China where labour is cheaper. But Lee, an energetic woman whose smile seems to come quite naturally, believes it is the “soft” aspects of business that have fuelled and will continue to fuel TNT’s growth in Taiwan. “It really is all about people,” she says. “Customer focus is a verb.”
The numbers back her up. Since becoming managing director in 2006, Lee has implemented customer-focused KPIs in every area of the business, and the business has consistently logged strong revenue growth and profit increases—in a market where competitors are seeing their businesses shrink or become unprofitable.
Lee is certain of the focus and the way forward for her business, but that wasn’t always the case. During the dot-com boom, she read two books a day to keep up with what was happening in the global market and how it affected her own. “I wondered what was the way forward when the market was changing so quickly. What was the realistic solution for our customers?” Ultimately Lee concluded that “our best bet is simply sticking to the strengths we have. We’ve got incredible access to Europe—TNT Express has three flights a day from Taiwan to its European air hub in Liège (Belgium)—and we’re great at serving small and medium-sized customers.”
Part of TNT’s appeal to small and medium-sized customers in Taiwan is its ability to offer what Lee calls “unique and ‘impossible’” services. “We can do anything, and we’ve proved it,” she says. When a large mobile telephone maker was launching a new product in Europe and needed phones shipped and fully customs-cleared within two days, for instance, they asked every express provider to help. “We were the only one who could do it,” reports Lee. “When the CEO held one of the phones we’d delivered in his hand at the launch event, our employees were so proud.” TNT Taiwan has seen its Special Services business grow significantly in recent years.
Lee—who joined TNT Express as a sales representative and ascended through a series of roles including marketing and sales director before taking on her current job—has seen a lot of change over those years. And when she looks to the future, she sees more change as the local economy continues to evolve. But, for Lee, change is a good thing. She thrives on it. “Since I’ve been with TNT, I never thought about taking another job. I didn’t have time to. TNT is moving so fast and the changes are so exciting. I just keep learning, delivering and being promoted—and suddenly I’m general manager.”
That wasn’t a role Lee envisioned for herself early on. “When I was a kid, my big dream was to play piano very well,” she says. And she did work as a piano instructor for a time until her father gave her some advice. “Don’t make your hobby your job,” he said. “If you do, you will lose your hobby.” Lee heeded her father’s advice, but in typical Lucy Lee fashion, she took it a little further: She made her job her hobby. Today, she still enjoys playing Chopin on her grand piano in the weekends. When she’s not at the airport, that is.