YOUR BUSINESS: David Lee

Ten steps to making customer service a guiding principle

Copyright © 2005 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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About the Author is founder of Human Nature@ Work, a management training and consulting firm based in Bar Mills. He can be reached via e-mail at David@ HumanNatureAtWork.com. To top of story

Do your employees delight your customers or do they drive them away?

Were you able to answer this question confidently or did you feel a bit uneasy? Based on my experience both as a customer and a consultant, I think you would be wise to be more than a little uneasy.

Whether it's the surly receptionist answering the phone, the bored twenty-something who stares balefully at you as you approach the counter, or the clerk lacking a clue about the merchandise they're selling, I find myself thinking, "Does the business owner realize what this person is doing to their business's reputation?"

Unless you're one of the very few business owners who has employees who consistently create the kind of customer experience that makes people wish every business was like this, you would be wise to take serious action to upgrade the service your employees provide. Here are 10 things you can do to make this happen:

1. Get better at hiring the right people. Think of the employees you have right now and ask yourself, if you had to do it over, would you hire each of them again?

Many people just don't have what it takes to give great service. They lack the personality, the social skills or the interest in people required to give decent - let alone great - customer service. They just don't get it and they never will.

Although it might be hard to fill a position, you pay a steep price in terms of alienated customers when you hire the wrong person. To paraphrase an old saying: "Hire in haste . . . repent in leisure."

Whether you attend a seminar on effective hiring practices, get coaching or retain someone to help you refine your hiring process, do something to get better at hiring the right people in the first place. Everything becomes a lot easier when you do.

2. Ask yourself if you're treating your employees like you want them to treat your customers. Whether your employees give great service when you're not around depends on whether you create a climate of goodwill, pride and respect.

3. Remind your employees that they are mission-critical. Impress upon them that to the customer, they are your business. They're not a minimum-wage peon. They determine, in each customer's "moment of truth," whether that customer comes back and whether they say good things about your business.

4. Teach your employees "everything matters." Every interaction they have with your customers affects your reputation - for better or for worse.

5. Address poor service quickly and decisively. Would you pay someone to stand out in front of your business with a sign saying: "We don't like our customers. Enter at your own risk"? Having employees who give poor service accomplishes the same thing.

6. Give your employees more than just the power to frustrate customers with "that's not our policy" responses. Give them - like the Ritz Carlton does - the power to delight your customers. If you question whether they will make the right decision, you've either hired the wrong person or you've skimped on training.

If you want your employees to act like a business owner, don't make them check their brains at the door. Let them make decisions and judgment calls.

7. Give your employees opportunities to make a difference. Ask them to help you analyze how your policies, practices and processes could be more customer friendly. This is one of the most important things you can do to keep employees engaged and inspire them to think - and care - like they owned the business.

8. Encourage your employees to be "customer service detectives." Engage them in conversations about their own experiences as customers and what the clerk/server/call center representative did to create either a positive or negative experience, and how they could have improved it. Ask them how you and they can apply this to your business.

9. Keep work interesting by giving employees opportunities to develop their skills on the job. Conduct brief, informal meetings that focus on a specific technique or principle. At future meetings, discuss how they applied these and what they learned.

10. Catch them in the act of doing a great job. Don't just say "Way to go." Comment specifically on what you noticed and why it was great.

Collect and use these examples of stellar service as teaching tools with all your employees. Doing this clarifies and reinforces your vision of what great service looks and sounds like. It also clearly demonstrates that you notice and value great service.

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