Poor customer service continues to afflict our industry. In fact, it (along with retention) is perhaps the biggest hot button issue for owners and managers… not to mention consumers themselves.
The issue I have is that poor customer service has been a hot button issue for years, decades even. If you listen to almost any industry association, publication, consultant, or pundit they’ll have you believe that customer service is the cause of all your woes.
My question is that if everyone agrees that customer service is such a big problem why hasn’t the collective intellect of hundreds of industry experts and thousands of owners and managers (over several decades) been able to resolve it?
Surely with all that time and attention we could have trained monkeys to serve our customers by now… and yet we still have problems with our staff. Staff turnover is too high (costing countless thousands of dollars annually in recruitment and training) and frontline staff members continue to feel like canon fodder (resulting in low morale, absenteeism, and lost productivity).
Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with my position on customer service. I tend to agree with W. Edwards Deming’s 85/15 rule which posits that 85% of a worker’s effectiveness is determined by the system he works within and only 15% can be attributed to his own skill.
If you, like me, agree with the 85/15 rule then you need to refocus your efforts from your employee’s (where most emphasis has historically been) onto your systems. And when I say systems I don’t just mean rewriting your procedures manual, or even buying the latest and greatest customer service manual from IHRSA, ACE, or the consulting guru du jour.
I mean completely reorganizing your business around your customers… anything less will only perpetuate our long legacy of customer service failures.
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