New Day Leadership

Customer Service: Out to the Cleaners

I’ve heard, and read, great things about Ritz-Carlton hotels. Pfeffer (1998) reports that Ritz employees have $2,500 at their disposal to spend, with no approval necessary, in order to ensure customer complaints are resolved.

A local cleaners could sure learn from this practice and philosophy.

A few days ago I attempted to give this particular business another chance. Three out of the last four times I’ve given them patronage the service was completely dissatisfactory. On one occasion clearly marked stains were not removed - until I returned the item and pointed out the oversight. Another time I picked up an order only to learn when I arrived at home that an item was missing. During my last visit I brought home someone else’s pants. Good grief.

I figured if it were my business I’d want to know that I was about to lose a customer, so upon the “these aren’t mine” ordeal I took the time to go in the store and explain my bad experiences. After having to state my history three times, a manager promised to credit my account $10. So, I felt a little compensated for their shortcomings. Although $10 just about equaled the gas I’d spent returning to the store so they could correct their mistakes.

A few days ago I attempted to redeem the pledge for store credit only to learn that it didn’t exist. An associate wanted me to remember the manager who had promised the credit and said, “I’ll have them call you,” as she attempted to swipe my seven items off the counter and into a bag for processing.

Unsatisfactory. I knew I had a coupon from Scott’s Cleaners in the car and I knew I was willing to go down the street and use it. And so I did. Scott’s has always treated me right.

Convenience says that I’ll return to the local cleaning powerhouse despite my unsatisfactory service; but determination says I won’t. They traded a $10 store credit for a happy customer. How cheap. How unappreciative. How short-sighted.

I’m not sure how much they spend on publicity on an average month, but I’m guessing that $10 (store credit mind you, not cash) is worth avoiding the negative publicity of a disgruntled customer.

But we (as leaders) don’t think that way often, but we should. Customer service seems obsolete.

Customer service used to mean taking care of the customer. Today customer service means getting the customer to serve themselves while you make a profit – when was the last time you fixed your own fast food drink, processed your own deposit through an ATM, pumped your own gas.

Maybe customer service is quickly reaching extinction because customer servants rarely make a connection between the service they render and the cash it accumulates which in turn buys their bread and vacations. 

Maybe in too many cases customer servants feel they are only filling their boss’ bank account and not their own. Maybe they feel too disconnected from the person and or organization in which they work to even care about rendering satisfactory customer service. 

A few organizations come to mind where my experience is that customer servants do an exceptional job of serving their customers. All are examples where the servants have some ownership of the bottom line and, in many cases, have some sort of connection with the organization’s senior leadership. Examples include Mount Olive Pickle Company, Inc. (www.mtolivepickles.com), Food Lion (www.foodlion.com), and One Source Communciations (www.onesource4u.com).

So, senior leaders – are you connecting with and vesting in your customer servants? Is the product or service you render yours, theirs, or you-alls? Are the customer servants of your organization trusted enough and empowered sufficiently to satisfy a customer who has been wronged in their service? Maybe they should be.

Reference

Pfeffer, J. (1998). The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

 

© 2005 Randy Cobb

DUCK Leadership

You probably think DUCK is some clever acronym, but it’s not.  DUCK is just what it says.  DUCK is duck.  Quack; quack.

 

This past week I was working to encourage a key leader and joked about him writing a book about DUCK leadership.  But then I thought, “Why should he have all the fun?”

DUCK leadership is quite simple.  It’s about letting the ill-equipped thoughts of others slide right off you – “like water off … a duck’s back.”

 

Not that we, as leaders, don’t have a responsibility to listen attentively and give serious consideration to every comment, critique, compliment and complaint thrown our way, but we are to do so with the capacity to weigh out such forms of admonition and take action on those that are well-founded. 

 

When we fail to give merit to other’s perspectives, we allow pride, arrogance, and self-sufficiency to fester.  When we live to pacify every voice in the wind we lack stability, conviction and character.

Often we will need the consultation of an objective third-party to help us determine if the commentary thrown our way deserves to instigate life adjustments or to ignite the exercise of DUCK.  Ego-driven and or self-preservation-caused “blind spots” can keep us from seeing or receiving truth, especially truth that would offer refining challenge.  Most often the ability to DUCK with legitimacy is a task only attained with the help of others. 

 

It’s a self-desecrating feat to ignore compliment or critique that needs to be absorbed.  It can be a self-destructive measure to embrace commentary that needs to be DUCKed.

 

As for the good folks to whom we apply DUCK, do they not deserve to continue to have merit and value in the eyes of the DUCKer?  Certainly.  Well in most cases at least. 

 

And are they not owed the best discourse possible to elaborate upon the legitimacy of their being DUCKed?  As difficult as it is, yes, they do.  Especially in environments where integrity, honest communication, and authentic community are values.  For the DUCKee it is easy to feel slapped with disregard and disrespect, and therefore feel isolated and devalued.

 

In other words, the DUCKer looses creditability with the DUCKee unless communication transpires. And in a world where communication halts are to be avoided, in a world of teamwork and flat organizational structures rather than hierarchical systems and prolific authoritarianism, breakdowns in communication are unacceptable.

 

In essence DUCK leadership is about avoiding the compulsion or conviction to be all things to all people, yet it is about the responsibility to without bias be thoroughly attuned to the perspectives of others. DUCK provides leaders the responsibility to entertain the thoughts of everyone, yet permission to live free from the impact of unfounded opinions.

 

Happy quacking.

© 2005 Randy Cobb