For some reason, I have always felt that “thank you” was the phrase that would accompany the end of a customer transaction, but this seems pretty rare today. Feeling that a purchase is somehow incomplete without it, I now provide the “thank you” myself, just so things feel finished. I buy my groceries and say “thank you.” I stop for coffee or make a purchase and find I am the one offering the thank you at the end of the transaction.

And I cannot seem to stop myself. While it is bad enough that I am the one providing the appreciation for a customer transaction in which I am the customer, it is pretty upsetting to hear the response “no problem” to the “thank you” that should have been offered to me in the first place.

No problem? What does a problem have to do with taking my money anyway? What exactly does it mean? It sounds like this: “Yeah, it is not too much of a hassle to serve you today.” Or, “I guess I can handle ringing this up for you.”  And truthfully if it were a problem, I could probably take my business elsewhere. And why must I be reminded in each transaction that it is “not a problem” to serve me?

Are the basics of service: “thank you” and “you’re welcome” gone forever? Or, are they about to make a resurgence? As the 80’s and 90’s business boom fades into our collective memories, my hope is that we will again remember that the customer is king. The customer is not just some nameless number that makes profit charts go up. They are human beings, with human emotions and human needs. They need handled with a human touch. I believe that the business that figures this out and works to build these human skills will be in the front of the pack with little competition.

But gosh, maybe I am out of date in my thinking and I need to get a grip and adjust my expectations for this “new approach” to serving the customer. What do you think? Are the expressions of please, thank you, and you’re welcome, just old ridiculous notions we should moth ball in the Smithsonian with Dorothy’s
Ruby Slippers? I do hope you will weigh in on this issue. I am truly interested in other views.

Tags: Sightings // 8 Comments »

When I spotted a bumper sticker that that boldly proclaimed: “I hate my job” I carefully considered the risks taken to announce this concern publicly during a time of so few new jobs in the market. The economic environment seemed to scream out the severity of this problem, but I wondered if anyone besides me was concerned about the reasons behind this complaint.

This got me thinking about this employee’s boss. It seemed pretty unlikely that this manager would sport a bumper sticker that would announce to the world, “I hate my employees.” One key difference between managers and employees is that most managers have learned how to effectively mask behaviors that will get them fired or not be helpful in advancing their careers…or have they?

It is hard to separate the manager from her employee who openly displays the message ”I hate my job.” Where do such feelings come from? Let’s explore some possibilities…

Reason # 1: The Work Itself

While it’s possible the employee dislikes the task work, the work should not have come as a huge surprise. If a good solid approach to hiring was in place within this organization, a perspective employee would have a window into the work, the culture, and the team they’d be joining (see Rule 3: Begin at the Very Beginning). The work was (or should have been) understood and accepted on the job interview. Perhaps there is a better reason behind the bumper sticker…

Reason # 2: Compensation

So, what about pay? Considering compensation is agreed to and accepted by employees in the contract for employment, pay really does not drive motivation or engagement. Many mangers blame pay rather than look at their role or other issues on the team when things are not going so well. Hertzberg and other management theorists have suggested that though fair pay is critical to attracting good talent, money is simply not a motivator.

Reason # 3: Policy and Procedures

Policies and procedures are the next area we should explore. This area of the employee’s workplace experience does indeed have the potential to create much unhappiness (see Rule:1 Rules are Meant to be Broken). Yet often, it is how a policy gets communicated that creates the real trouble. Communicating in the interest of the receiver is an important skill for leaders. Having solid interpersonal skills such as listening and empathy go a long way in communicating this kind of information successfully. If a policy or procedure represents a change in a way of doing something, leaders need to have the skills to position change for greater acceptance and quicker integration (see Rule 34: Help your Team Accept Change).

The Key Reason: The Boss

Not to overly simplify employee engagement, there are surely many more aspects of the work that drive this. Yet, many experts agree that the relationship with the manager is a key driver. Managers often feel picked on, but they are critical in driving outcomes, job satisfaction, and innovation on the job.

What role are your leaders playing in the engagement and results in your organization? Have they been properly prepared to lead? Do they know how to address complaints early on before they become so large they must be displayed for the world to see?  Today more then ever you need every employee’s best effort to win. The key to unlocking this potential is within your leadership team.

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I stood in the long line waiting to board flight 1059 and eventually shuffled my way toward the gate. When I got close enough, I was able to observe the mechanical way customers handed their pass to the attendant who quickly scanned the ticket and handed it back. No interaction, eye contact or conversation seemed part of this routine. I tried to break the rhythm as I handed my pass to the attendant. “Thank you,” I proclaimed with as much enthusiasm as I could generate. No response was returned, not even visual contact. The attendant was already searching for the next pass being extended toward him.

I boarded the airplane in search of the next employee I might engage in conversation. As I stepped aboard, I asked the attendant “How are you?” “Much better today” came the reply followed by a spontaneous interchange related to yesterday’s bad weather, spilled drinks, and assorted travel woes. Our brief conversation ended with laughter as my turn to move toward my seat arrived. As I settled into my cramped coach seat I tallied up the experience from a customer perspective.

True, it hadn’t started out too well with conflicting information related to a delay, and general confusion among passengers at the gate. Then the boarding pass ‘incident’ occurred followed by a delightful exchange with the greeting attendant. The score was stacked against the airline 2 to1. Yet, I was feeling so positive about my experience, I had to wondered why. As I considered the quality of the interchange with the welcoming attendant, it seemed it had overcompensated and erased the previous negative experiences for me. Could it be if just 1/3 of your customer interactions are truly positive they could wipe out at least a portion of your negative encounters? I’ll be monitoring my customer experiences in the coming days to see if this theory can hold true. I hope you will too.

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It seems that encouraging autonomy would be highly desirable in today’s lean workplaces…and it certainly would support employee engagement. Yet many leaders struggle to give employees autonomy on the job.

I’ll be asking about this issue during my interview with author Lee Colan on Bookends this week. Lee is the author of “Engaging the Hears and Minds of all your Employees” and my featured guest this week on Bookends. To register to attend this (free) interview follow this link:http://www.teamapproach.com/bookends/engagingheartsandminds.asp

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I was driving to a client site yesterday when I got behind a pickup truck with a bummer sticker that said, “I hate my job.”  Now there’s a message if anyone is actually paying attention. It flashes like a neon sign as this employee pulls in and out of the employee parking lot, but I’m guessing it shows up even stronger in the employee’s behavior. 

Let’s consider this “message” from the employee’s perspective first. He knows that during this economic downturn, jobs are evaporating everyday. He also knows that if you loose a job, accidentally or on purpose, finding a new one may be more difficult then before. Yet, the he openly communicates his frustration through his actions and perhaps also through his inactions: a pretty good indicator of the severity of the problem.

He is willing to risk his job because his dissatisfaction is so high. He does not seem to care if anyone notices. I’d like to think he cares enough that he wants to be heard, otherwise, why would he advertise his feelings.

Now let’s consider what this might look like from the manager’s perspective. Let’s call the employee Harry and the manager Mira…

Mira: “Harry is at it again. This is the fourth Friday he’s left his team hanging in the middle of this critical project by not showing up.  How is it he always gets sick on a Friday? If we didn’t need him so badly right now, I’d fire him. “

 A while back, Jan Carlzon, who was President of Scandinavian Airlines, wrote a great little book called: “Moments of Truth” He was talking about the thousands of “moments” that add up to the customer’s total experience. This is a very good way to understand employee engagement too. There are numerous interactions, organizational systems and other workplace factors that impact employee engagement.   One of these factors is leadership’s ability to manage complaints.

A bumper sticker that says, “I hate my job” is a pretty serious complaint. My guess is that it represents a collection of complaints because no one has been paying attention for a long while. Even so, as the leader, you can begin to build engagement anytime you are committed to doing so.  

Many leaders shy away from complaints because they are “unpleasant.” But having an employee who moves into active sabotage mode out of sheer frustration is far more unpleasant. Having to continuously spend time interviewing, hiring and retraining is also unpleasant. Manage complaints when they first show up;  this will create engagement on your team. Don’t allow complaints to mature into full-blown workplace crises. 

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We’ve run our company on Apple computers  for 23 years…long before the world discovered what we’ve always known:  Macs are cool. As much as we’ve loved our Mac’s, we’ve always had one or two applications that required a PC. Since the newer machines now have Intel chips, we easily can run Windows right on our machines without the need for a PC in our office. This, however, is exactly when all the trouble began…

As we were preparing for a presentation using a Window based applications we could not get this application to project.  After a few days of doing everything short of calling Microsoft we had made no progress.

Have your ever actually called Microsoft for help?  This is kind of a touchy subject in our office after Intuit was purchased by Microsoft.  The amazing support we had grown accustomed to seemed to disappear overnight. We dreaded that phone call and headed out instead to the Apple store with our Mac that was resisting behaving like a PC.

We knew this was not Apple’s problem so we disguised the visit with a different need and then casually brought up our frustration over the Window’s concern. Nothing quite like watching an “Apple Genius” thinking about a Window’s problem- these folks aren’t called “geniuses” for nothing. They seem unable to stop themselves when a “challenge” is brought to them. They are relentless. After about 15 minutes of web searching and trying different avenues our genius unlocked the solution to our problem.  He seemed pretty pleased with himself, but not nearly as pleased as we were.

Rule 1 suggests that sometimes you have to break the rules to serve customers. I am guessing Apple prefers that their employees help customers with “Apple” applications that run on the “Apple operating system.” That makes good business sense, but offering “outrageous” customer support (when you can) produces goodwill that can never replicated by even the most creative Apple commercials. 

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To develop a fully engaged team, everyone in your organization needs to be a leader.   This means the entire team needs to be able to exercise judgment on the day-to-day challenges and opportunities that present themselves. Whether or not this happens has a lot to do with your approach to managing.

Think about it. How can any organization win without everyone’s full participation? Participation is a key indicator of engagement.  In some organizations, however, rules, policies, and procedures are designed to cover every possible contingency so employees do not need to think.  Have you ever written to your Senator or Congressman and received a form letter response that barely addressed your concern? Have you ever complained about a product you’ve purchased and received what appeared to be a memorized response from an employee? Contrast this to IKEA, where a prominent sign in their Philadelphia area store was used to recruit employees who would “think for themselves.”  This enlightened approach will attract top talent and build engagement.

Sometimes organizations create policies for the masses the moment an individual employee (or customer) slips up. Creating policies may seem easier than coaching and managing performance, but the results are dramatically different. When coaching, you clarify misunderstandings about performance and usually discover that few employees try to do poor quality work on purpose. Rules and polices are usually perceived by employees as an expectation of future poor performance- generally not the best way to build an engaged team.

Following memorized sequences and prescribed patterns such as “thank you for shopping at …”, is counter to a team approach which actively solicits the input, ideas and good thinking from every member of the team. If your organization has rules, you may find that sometimes it is necessary to break a rule in order to provide extraordinary service or to go around a system that is not serving the customer. You and your team should actively discuss these rules to determine their impact on customers and desired results. By inviting discussions around rules and policies you send a message that sometimes the rule may not be the most effective approach. Such discussions increase engagement.

Shortly after our youngest daughter began dating, there was a surge in her text messages; but we did not discover this until our bill arrived from AT &T. In addition to the monthly service for her phone, she had over $90 in text message charges above and beyond her monthly allotment. As we discussed this situation with our representative, we were surprised and delighted that she was empowered to remove the charge entirely and help us secure a plan that would prevent this from occurring in the future. True, AT&T was out our $90, but as new customers who had left another supplier only months before due to poor service, we were feeling really good about the new relationship. And, considering the long term monthly increase in our fee,  AT&T was not out anything at all. Yet the customer representative skillfully positioned the increase as a great service to us, which of course it was.

Yes, rules may be necessary, but they often prevent people from being actively engaged. Rules will never take the place of directly dealing with performance issues on your team.  They certainly cannot replace excellent service skills and they should be scrutinized regularly to evaluate how they are helping to promote success for the team and organization as well as their impact on engagement.

 Action: Make a list of all the rules and policies that are active in your organization for both employees and customers. Discuss these with your team and begin to analyze their impact. How are they serving employees, the customer, and the organization?

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I was having lunch with a group of women attending a conference where I was presenting who were engaged in a lively discussion about far-off family members who attempted to stay in touch by sending occasional pictures of family happenings through email. They were lamenting that they did not care to get these photos of these sisters or cousin’s children or vacations and they really wished they’d not send them. As they got caught up in their collective complaints about annoying family members who insisted on staying connected, one of them went off on a tirade of her extreme hatred for Christmas letters. Why anyone in her family would ever think she’d want to know about their past year was simply beyond her. These letters were a nuisance that were simply unforgivable!

I sat and listened with such fascination that I was unable to speak. What could possibly bring us to the point that we no longer care about relationships. Gosh, what else is there? Am I missing something? If some of us have burned out to this point that we are willing to forget our own families, what are we like with our work peers and customers? Was this a freak encounter with some folks needing to work with mental health experts, or is this an emerging trend?  How would such a perspective impact engagement on the team?

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Last weekend we visited Pittsburgh, PA- what a great town! After parking we found one of those pre-pay machines on the way out of the parking garage that “asked us” to insert our ticket. My husband promptly pulled what he through was his ticket from his wallet and inserted it into the machine. The machine immediately froze up and refused to spit his ticket back out so we could pay and get on with our business.

There we were, cold and needing to get to our appointment when we saw a bell to ring for an attendant. Yes, the garage actually had an attendant, but this employee was kept safely hidden away from the customers who were forced to conduct their business with these machines. How glad I was to have the opportunity to meet this wonderful gentleman who opened the machine and laughed as he handed the previous evenings theater ticket back to Rick asking him what it was he had put into the machine. We all had quite a good laugh as Rick complained about the number of tickets he seemed to have accumulated in his wallet over our trip.

As we walked through Pittsburgh to reach our appointment, I wondered why the parking authority would hire such a great humored employee and then only allow him to connect with patrons when there was a problem. If cities had folks like this who could create a favorable impression of their town, wouldn’t it make more sense to have them be more hands-on with customers? Silver bullets solutions (see rule 5) separate customers from helpful people who can make their experiences memorable and positive. Where have you run into a silver bullet lately? Look around your community, organization and team to see what you find. I’m eager to hear your experiences.  

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