It Is All About The Choices
We Make
One of life’s great delights is to meet people who share your passion.
Such people not only teach you valuable lessons, they provide much needed inspiration,
especially if you feel you are often a lone voice crying in the wind.
For me, one such person is Graeme Wheeler, who owns a successful construction
company in Auckland, employing about 20 people, called City Pavements. I have
had the pleasure of listening to Graeme on a number of occasions over the past
two years. He is a valuable customer of one of my clients, who are on a journey
to become customer driven. We have held a number of seminars throughout New
Zealand for the company’s managers and at these events we have invited
customers like Graeme to talk about their expectations of the company, and
what they think it does well and what it does poorly.
When Graeme spoke, he outlined the principles by which he runs his own business.
A modest man, Graeme is the first to admit he does not always get it right
but he is passionate about putting the customer first and he is persistent
in trying to give his customers an outstanding experience. In my opinion, what
is unique about Graeme is that he really understands what it takes to deliver
superior customer service.
Customer service is a matter of personal choice
One of Graeme’s main points is customer service is a matter of personal
choice. “You choose to look after your customer or you choose to look
after yourself,” says Graeme. “You choose to go the extra mile
or to do as little as possible. Whether your customer gets a good or bad experience
depends on the choices you make.”
Like all profound statements, this one is very simple and so very true. When
you touch your customers, at what Jan Carlsson called moments of truth over
30 years ago, whether your customer has a good or bad experience depends on
how you behave and Graeme’s point is how you behave is based on the choices
you make.
The senior management of Vodafone chooses to use an automated voice system
instead of people on its customer service number, thus making it very difficult
for customers to get the help they need. The senior management of Air New Zealand
has chosen not to provide a check-in service for its customers but to install
technology that requires customers to check themselves and their baggage in,
and even to scan their own boarding pass. Likewise, the senior management of
New World, has chosen to use its staff to encourage customers to check out
their own groceries rather than do it for them. The senior management of oil
companies have chosen reduce staff and make you pump your own petrol and then
to protect themselves from theft by requiring you to walk into the store twice:
once to ask the pump be turned on and the second to pay for the petrol.
The point is, companies like these do not provide customers with bad experiences,
people running these companies make choices that result in customers having
a bad experience. People, in their role as a senior manager, make a choice
to provide no service rather than customer service (and make no mistake about
it, self-service is no service). These people have chosen to reduce the money
they spend looking after you and to spend it on advertisements convincing you
to spend your money with them. These people have chosen to say, in effect,
to their customers, “Do it yourself, mate. We are not hiring staff to
do it for you.”
The issue is not confined to senior managers, of course. The same applies
to front-line staff who choose to say, “I don’t know,” rather
than “I’ll find out and get back to you.” Or who choose to
make life easy for themselves by doing as little as possible rather than helping
their customers by going the extra mile. Or who choose to be unfriendly, or
even surly, rather than to act pleasantly. Or who choose to make excuses when
something goes wrong rather than say, sorry. Or who choose to disrespect their
customers by not saying please or thank you.
And you? Which choices have you made? Have you chosen to set policies that
look after your customers or look after you? Have you chosen to design systems,
processes and procedures that make it easy for you to operate your business,
or easy for your customers to do business with you? Have you chosen to employ
staff who are technically competent or who have the attitude and behaviours
that provide customers with a great experience? Do you choose to treat these
staff as your customers or as a necessary evil? Do you choose to train your
staff so they have the product knowledge and skills necessary to serve customers
well or to save time and money by throwing them in the deep end? Do you choose
to help your staff understand how the choices they make affects the experience
customers have, and how that in turn affects the future profitability of your
business, or do you choose not to even think about it? Do you choose to reward
staff who do make great choices for customers, and to deal with staff who do
not, or do you choose to ignore what they do.
It is worth thinking about these questions because the choices you and you
staff make will affect whether your customers choose to come back and what
they choose to say about you to others.
|
