The Manager - Edition 100 - Customer Service
THE MANAGER - BY ROB LAMBERT
Hi,
Hope you are safe and well.
All is good here at Lambert Towers. The weather has been spectacular in the UK the last few days, so I’ve enjoyed a couple of BBQs, dipping in the paddling pool with the boys and some great walks.
It’s edition 100 of The Manager! A bit of a landmark for me.
It’s technically about edition 145, but I reset 100 editions ago, renamed the newsletter to The Manager and rebranded. I did have a large period where I also didn’t publish any newsletters as I wrangled with who I was, who I was trying to help and what the newsletter needed to be.
Thank you so much for subscribing. I do hope I can continue to provide another 100 editions of this newsletter.
Thank you also to the many of you who have responded and mentioned how you’re enjoying the newsletter. Thank you for sharing it with friends and colleagues – and your managers!
And thank you to those who’ve kept me in line with critical feedback that always helps me to tighten up the content and my own thinking. I’m still learning about the world of management and HR.
In fact, earlier this month I took the plunge and signed up to sit the professional CIPD diploma in HR – which is going well so far – although I can see already why so many HR professionals take on work and responsibility that I believe belongs with management – but more on this in future editions.
As it’s edition 100 I thought I’d bundle up a load of templates, free copies of my digital books, my communication workshop slides and other goodies – all available at the following download link below.
I hope they are useful and helpful. All I ask is that you don’t share them beyond your own company. I still need to try and make a small income from my books – they at least help pay for the servers to run my website.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/namox9fmemguhzk/AAB74LBXaQTQxfDd2VRAVGa3a?dl=0
I also dropped a new post and video last week about shifting company cultures. You can find it here : https://cultivatedmanagement.com/cultureshift/
And BTW – if you and your team need some help working out how to work better together, then I’ve also launched a new service. A remote “Know Your Team” workshop. It’s a half day workshop where we use DISC to understand more about your team, how they prefer to work and how to move forward as a cohesive unit. More details on this page - https://cultivatedmanagement.com/work-with-me/
Customer Service
As we’re easing out of lockdown, I’ve been out a little bit (carefully) with my kids – shopping for clothes, the odd coffee and of course, grocery shopping. Before the pandemic customer service was a mixed bag depending on which shop or business you frequented, during the pandemic – not a lot has changed.
Customer service is an interesting concept to study in your daily lives. Customer service is an outwards demonstration of management and leadership. You can tell a lot about what a company (and its managers and leaders’ value) by the customer service provided.
I worked with one technical support manager who asked me what the costs would be to open the office for 24 hours a day (think security, lease, insurance etc). At the time I worked for a company who provided a cloud bases SaaS solution that enabled companies to set up call centres with remote teams anywhere in the world. We sold the solution on the fact all your agents needed was a phone number and an internet connection.
So, I asked the support manager why the team working through the night, supporting customers in other time zones, needed to be in the office - after all we used our own service.
The support manager's answer told you all you needed to know about how that team was managed. The response was “Because I don’t trust them and need a manager to watch them”. My immediate response was “Why did you hire people you don’t trust?”. Blank face.
Instead of filling their team's world with a great vision, inspiring reasons to work hard and clear consistent management, they hired with no due diligence and tried to instil amazing customer service via mantras, posters on the wall, carrots, sticks, salesforce monitoring, arbitrary targets and fear. It didn’t work. Customer satisfaction was poor and staff turnover high.
Every single business with poor customer service has a management problem. Miserable front-line staff represent miserable and damaging management tactics. Every company with poor processes, poor data management and poor timely responses shows everything you need to know about management.
Every shop you go in to where you feel like you have to bend to meet the weird and inflexible store policies, is a company that values standardisations that treats all customers as the same – a management issue.
Every time you have to do a company’s work for them as their customer – it is a company with poor leadership and management.
There is no way to create excellent customer satisfaction without first creating excellent staff satisfaction. If your people are motivated, clear on what success looks like and being treated like people – then this will naturally be passed on to your customers.
No matter which department you are in you are part of the customer service journey. Even if you’re not front line.
Here’s some general advice on customer service:
Hire for the person not the role.
Hire people who want to do good work. Who are positive. Who care. Who are nice people to be around.
Improve the customer service process from the customer’s perspective.
Staple yourself to work and understand the system – and then improve it – from the perspective of the customer.
Treat people like people – and let them make front-line decisions on how to ensure the customer feels looked after.
It can be tempting to codify every response, every interaction, every nuance – but exceptional customer service means treating every customer as exceptional - they are. How do you codify that?
Don’t use posters, banners, mantras and handbooks to demand better customer service.
Role model it, improve the process and care about the customer
Don’t allow bad mouthing about customers to take place.
In one company they had a list of the most hated customers on the wall!
All this does is breed contempt – without the customers there is no business.
Makes more sense to work out why customers are unhappy and solve their problems, than it does to talk rubbish about them.
Don’t throw money at the problem of customer service. Too much money can stifle creativity and bring in a reliance on expensive tooling that doesn’t solve problems.
Instead, encourage your staff to come forward with ideas on how to make work better, how to improve service and how to optimise processes.
Even better, show them how to make improvements carefully and scientifically -and let them do it!
The best way to ensure great customer service is to ensure you have a great product or service in the first place.
The most cost-effective way to provide great service is to improve the product or service.
If you’re on the front line you have a great swathe of data to feed into whoever is building and designing the product and service.
People want to work in an environment of co-operation.
Find levers to pull to “force” cooperation such as removing budgets, removing single power controls and providing unified cross-functional goals where people must work together to achieve them.
Role model cooperation, demonstrate that learning is constant and show people how to own up to mistakes.
Let people take whatever time they need with the customer to make the customer feel exceptional.
One of the worst things you can do for front line staff is curtail how much time they spend with the customer.
If you’ve hired well, these people will know when they’re done – and the customer will notice that.
Drop the policies.
Customers want to deal with people – not corporate policies.
There really are very few people in the world who will take advantage of your business – so why build policies for this angry minority when the majority of your customers want what they paid for?
And with that – I hope you go forth and build great customer service. And if you can suffer any more of my writing – you may find this Blazingly Simple Guide to Building a Support Team helpful. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/blazingly-simple-guide-building-support-team-rob-lambert/
Until next time.
Rob..
FOOD FOR YOUR MANAGEMENT BRAIN
1. How to build a company that actually values integrity. You know - a company that actually feels like a place where people demonstrate integrity - rather than a line item on a values poster on the wall. - https://hbr.org/2020/07/how-to-build-a-company-that-actually-values-integrity
2. Oh my - I've worked with plenty of people who place more value on arguing than talking. - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/20/how-to-argue-talk-dissent-disagree
3. Speaking of integrity - it seems some staff at troubled Facebook do indeed value integrity - but this has lead to some sad times for them. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-zuckerberg-what-if-trump-disputes-election-results
4. How to stay motivated at work whilst working remotely - https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/healthy-at-home/mental-health/how-to-stay-motivated-at-work-a4429561.html
5. Is it time to get rid of "culture fit" when hiring. I don't agree - not if you base culture on behaviours that are positive, critical, professional - if you think of culture as "fitting in" then yes - retire it. But culture is the outcome of people's behaviours and interactions - not fitting in. https://lattice.com/library/is-it-time-to-retire-culture-fit-for-culture-add
6. Cultivating company culture during lockdown......again - if we look at culture as the sum of behaviours and interactions - we're cultivating it all the time - not sure why we need special projects :) - https://medium.com/sqreen-io/cultivating-company-culture-in-lockdown-4e89d5167dad
7. Love this story - how they invented, tested and brought to market rice cookers - fascinating insights on how to breed innovation - https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/rice-cooker-history
8. Don't waste the lesson - how we can learn when things go wrong. Remember, a mistake is an opportunity to make yourself and the company better - https://seths.blog/2020/08/dont-waste-the-lesson/
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Thanks
Rob..