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Building Strong Service Infrastructure Personnel Problems Could Disguise Other Inadequacies
January, 2007
By Jeff Mowatt
When organizations are suffering from customer complaints, staff turnover or a lack of teamwork, at first glance, these appear to be frontline problems. Frequently, though, problems involving attitudes and teamwork are actually just symptoms of flawed infrastructure.
Perhaps the following is true of your organization:
( Employees are not getting along with each other. Individually, each person appears to be hard working and capable, but their personalities clash when they work together.
( Conflict exists between departments. One group blames the other for foul-ups and they are unwilling to share information, key people or resources.
( Employee turnover is an ongoing challenge.
( Employee theft is an ongoing challenge.
( People are complaining about certain employee behaviours.
( Your team's service has been good, but you are having difficulty taking their service to the next level.
If your organization has none of the preceding issues, then either you are already a service icon or you have so few employees that no changes are needed - providing you plan on staying small. If, however, you have circled one or more of the preceding scenarios, there is a problem.
The question is: what's the real problem? Frequently, managers conclude that they have a personnel problem, when what often lies beneath the tip of this iceberg is flawed infrastructure. Underlying systems not only affect morale, but also impact productivity, customer satisfaction and profits.
ASSESSING CUSTOMER SERVICE STANDARDS
Try this quiz by scoring your organization with a 0, 1 or 2 in response to the following scenarios. Use: 0 if the statement reflects what's happening in your organization; 1 to indicate that while the organization is not quite in that situation, there is room for improvement; and 2 if the statement simply doesn't apply.
( Customer service training consists of a job orientation, then "learn as you go".
( Either no corporate mission statement exists, or nobody refers to the one that exists.
( There are no written service standards or those that exist are all focused on speed and fast turnaround times.
( Employee and customer feedback goes to managers, but there is no formal system for converting feedback into product and service improvements.
( There is no formal employee recognition system.
( When it comes to developing employee skills, managers do more correcting and reacting than proactive coaching.
( Training events and team-building events appear to improve productivity and morale momentarily, but eventually people revert back to their old ways of interacting with each other.
If your score was 12-14, congratulations. You have systems in place to become a service icon. At 8 to 11, there is room for improvement. If the score was 0 to 7, the organization is vulnerable to employees and customers moving.
If your score was less than 12, it could be a symptom of deeper problems with your infrastructure - i.e. formal systems for customer service training, service standards, customer feedback and implementation, and employee recognition. It's futile to try to fix the people problems, unless you fix the underlying infrastructure.
Managers may think that fixing their infrastructure takes a huge amount of time and resources. That's a myth. Slight adjustments to an organization's existing practices can create substantial results, and the process can be conducted in-house with a company's own staff.
ENGAGING EMPLOYEES
Today's employees do indeed want more - and it isn't just money. According to studies in employee motivation by Dr. Kenneth Kovach of George Mason University, the number one motivator for employees is interesting work.
The question is how to turn a potentially boring job into something interesting? The most effective way to motivate employees is through ongoing training.
One workout in a lifetime is going to do more harm than good because there is a risk of injury and overall improvement in performance will be negligible. Similarly, a one-time training session for employees is likely to just raise their expectations and eventually annoy them, especially when - without reinforcement and support - everything reverts back to the way it was before the one-time training. We need to convert training from being an event into an ongoing process.
Managers should look at training as a two-phased approach. Phase one is professional training that equips employees with the subtleties of service that makes work more interesting. Once that new foundation of knowledge is established, then managers can conduct their own monthly meetings.
The fascinating and sometimes frustrating art of enhancing customer perception is that there's always room for improvement. That also makes even the most seemingly mundane jobs more interesting.
The irony when it comes to training employees is that a lot of managers believe they can't afford to train employees because they have high turnover. The truth is, they have high turnover because they aren't providing ongoing education or growth for their employees.
Employees don't quit jobs when they're overworked. They quit jobs when they're bored. Or worse, when they are paid enough to physically show up, but have mentally moved on.
Jeff Mowatt is a business strategist and consultant. The preceding article is based on his book, Becoming a Service Icon in 90 Minutes a Month. For more information, see the web site at www.jeffmowatt.com.
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