Quality and Service: Management Made Simple
January 20, 2009 by Phil Gerbyshak
Filed under Business
As managers, we need to get back to our basics and focus on the two most important things that make customers happy.
Quality
Service
Terry Starbucker talks about this as his rallying cries for every business bulletin board. I know Terry, and I know his heart is in the right place, and I’d like to help him make his team more successful, and help you make yours more successful.
I have two questions that jumped out at me, and though I have an idea about both of these, I’d love to know what you believe the answers are. They are very important questions, so I’ll give you some time to think about them.
- How do you help you employees make the connection between the quality and service they provide, profitability, and ultimately, engage employees in the work they do every day.
- How do you convince customers that even though it takes us an extra 90 seconds to deliver the great quality and great service they want, that the extra time is worth the wait?
I asked these of Terry in the comments, and I’m curious what you think here.
Take your time. I know your answers will be worth the wait.
Phil, the first point to be made is that “the answer” is misleading: there are as many answers as there are types of relationships which exist within teams of people, and types of company environments.
As generally as I can describe it, though, managers can help their team members connect the value of their work to the success of the company in exactly the same way they can inspire and motivate those same people. In fact, that vital connection is part of the motivation process.
To be most effective, the tie-in has to come from the top. If the senior execs are not thinking about alignment of mission within the entire company, an individual manager is placed in a much-more difficult position in seeking to inspire.
In my last position, heading a small tech support team with over 600 end users as our customers in the corporate headquarters of a large corporation, the task was fairly easy: if the CEO’s exec assistant could not get something done for him, we knew that helping her was removing a barrier to his doing his job.
Even when it is not easy, though, the tactic is the same. Connect the work done to the improved work product of those you just helped.
I don’t have an answer to the second question, other than to continue to provide the best service to all who will accept it, and let those who are too busy to be given the best service eventually notice the difference. Most do. Those who don’t are usually gone before too long because that attitude–”I need help immediately, but I don’t have time to let you do it right”–is one which will poison their standing in the company as it leaks into all their relationships.
I agree with Rick that to the most effective it has to come fromthe top down. Granted that a manager can have a positive effect in his/her little domain – something is better than nothing!
My problem I have with the second part is to get others to do 90 seconds worth of additional work! Instead they would rather sluff it off to someone else or to another department.
I would rather spend some extra time and explain to the customer what I am doing, why I’m doing it, and how/what they can do on their own – thus saving THEM time.
I also make sure that if I can resolve the customer’s issue(s) that they are satisified before leaving. Others would fly out of the office faster than “The Flash” or they are told to call another department to finish! (Such a totla lack of quality let alone customer satisfaction!)
I am a firm believer of educating the customer by explaining things to them and why!
Hi Phil – thanks for the link and the questions relating to my post on quality and service.
As to your 1st question, managers need to have measurable data so teammates can “see” the results of their efforts. I use the Net Promoter Score, and what we call the Customer Fault Rate, to measure our quality and service performance. I then ask my managers to make sure our teammates know these weekly measurements. I connect these data points to the rally cries, and then ultimately make the case that if each employee does their job to the best of their abilities, this “connection” will result in individual job fulfillment and satisfaction.
On #2, it’s all about good communication with the customer. We need to be as concise and precise as possible when we explain our services to our customers, so if we do run a little longer than usual, the customer will understand. “Exceeding expectations” isn’t necessarily related to speed – it’s more related to the quality of the interaction itself.
Thanks Phil for the questions, and all the best!
I have people on my team demo and dogfood often. (Actually, Fridays are our “show and tell”)
In the demo case, it’s a litmus test of value. If they have to work to hard to show the value, it’s back to the drawing board. The flip side is it gives them a chance to strut their stuff for the team and show off their work.
In the dogfood case, it creates first-hand experience.
In both cases, these exercises create a shared frame of experience and build empathy.