August
14
2009
Little Things Put You Over the Top
August
14
2009
Contrary to what you may keep telling yourself, it doesn’t take a huge effort to put your business over the top in the mind of the customer. We tend to think such things require something grand, but it can be as simple as Warming the Mug before serving the coffee. Small efforts — an ounce of pressure in just the right places: the ones that your customers don’t expect. Little extras. Big payoff.
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I am repeatedly amazed at the profound disconnect that seems to exist in the minds of most people who work in a customer-engaging role. Far too many companies employee people who fail to make the connection between the revenue earned by the company from its customers and the amount of money that they are paid.
Perhaps this is simply a result of these people not being rewarded when they do treat customers in a way that they should be treated, or perhaps it is through the realization that they won’t be paid any greater amount if they work hard than if they simply do the least amount of work possible.
There is a valid point there. Effort without reward is seldom self-perpetuating. Yet the reality of no income if a business goes under is also very valid. How many viable businesses have failed not because the product or pricing was poor, but that the treatment of its customers was lethal?
Brent, you make a great point about the often minute effort required to reach greatness, however I think that the majority of the problem in our culture (Canadian) at the moment is elevating treatment of customers not to greatness from adequate, but to adequate from pathetic.
However, this rant of mine could simply be the result of the early-onset of elderly curmudgeoness. ‘Kids these days’ and such. I don’t think it is. I’m almost daily shocked at the number of young employees in customer-interacting roles where they are wearing one or both iPod earbuds WHILE I ATTEMPT TO SPEAK TO THEM, or how many are in the store, leaning up against something 100% distracted with some text messaging interaction rather than focused on the assigned work.
Was ‘our’ generation equally derided by our forebearers, or has there been some sort of fundamental social change?
Several thoughts come to mind here, Ron.
First, yes — I agree that in a good many cases the goal would be to bring service levels up to adequate. There could be a number of reasons why this is so. For one, undervalued employees will undervalue customers. Basically, they’ll pass on what they’re given by their employer or supervisor. Obviously we can’t apply that across the board, but it may account for some cases.
I wonder too about the economic climate. Because I know where you’re located, I know that in that region the unemployment rate has been so low for quite a while that even for “minimum-wage jobs”, the applicant often interviews the employer rather than the other way around. In those jobs, people wanting a long weekend will just not show up for work on Friday, and on Tuesday they’ll be in a new job. Obviously not the norm… but I wonder what your perspective on that might be, and how that situation may have changed over the last couple of years.
Of course each generation holds different values or attitudes that becomes a source of friction between them. The greater the difference, the greater the friction. We hear a lot now about how things aren’t the way they once were… where you got a job when you entered the workforce and stuck with the company until you collected your gold watch and eventually retired. True, things aren’t that way anymore… but I wonder if this generation reacts with a decreased employer-loyalty that manifests itself in abysmal customer service.
Just tossing out a few ideas here.
I’m definitely not the first person to write about this seeming shift between ‘what was’ and ‘what is’ in regards to employer-employee dedication and devotion, however I have not come across an opinion quite like the one I’m about to share. It is probably out there and is the product of better minds than mine, but as far as I know mine is an opinion that has not been influenced by anyone else’s explicit writing on this topic.
Your comment / question about the relationship between poor service and a shortage of employees is one I’ve heard many times and it makes me wonder if we are really as well informed as we think we are as to how ‘things used to be’. Did employees really expect from employers and give to employers a lifetime commitment in a career? Did employees never get fired or quit? Why would they be fired or quit and what would happen to them? Would they be marked for life as a quitter or a ‘bad hire’ and therefore suffer from unemployability thereafter?
Was the dedication between these two groups more a manifestation of the capabilities of movement (it was difficult socially and financially to migrate to a new city / country) and the knowledge of what opportunities exist in an unknown community where the employee knew nobody and may not have had a sub-culture community to rely on for aid? Today we can easily, cheaply and almost instantly relocate almost anywhere on the globe, and certainly we experience no wide-spread restriction on relocation within our own countries (to be sure, professional and trade designations and certifications / memberships are a form of mobility impairment). Telecommuting, tele-presence and inter-nation free-trade agreements have enabled employment to migrate without the need for a physical move of the worker.
That said, my real point is:
You know that I’m a left-wing pinko, so from that perspective I naturally tend to see a villain in every employer and a victim in every employee. The current employment situation in Canada seems only to reinforce my biases. Employers in Canada have shown themselves to be more interested in financial health than in employee health. During my working career (1980+) this pursuit of profit over people has become the norm and has certainly bumped up against the cultural reality or myth of employer-employee fidelity. As a child I was certainly imbued with the notion of the honour of dedication to one’s employer, and that this was a social contract. However, I have not experienced this type of employer employee relationship in my work history, having been laid-off, fired, down-sized, relocated and surplused by both public and private organizations.
I think that what we are seeing today is the ‘coming home to roost’ of a number of cultural, social and technological changes that have happened over the last 30 years. They are:
1. The removal of the social stigma of single-parenting, separation and divorce combined with women entering the workforce en-masse in the 1970s, thereby:
a. Creating generations of latch-key children
b. Creating generations of single-parent and daycare-raised children, which:
i. Prevents the establishment of a sense of stability and consistency in life.
ii. Trains children at a very deep internalized level that the most important thing is employment and the advancement of one’s career above all else.
iii. Trains children at a very deep level that the family isn’t something that is consistent, reliable and there for you to count on.
c. Increasing the supply of labour to a degree where 10-25% unemployment has been the norm for decades across the country
i. Business’ expect that all families are two-income based and therefore a typical single employee’s wage does not need to be sufficient to support a family. Pre-WWII wages generally reflected the cost to support an entire family.
2. The declaration of God’s death and concomitant social abandonment of any external moral source. The realization of Mutually Assured Destruction through the Cold-War’s build up of thermonuclear weapons removed much hope in the long-term future of humanity on earth.
a. Society lost all recourse to motivate citizens by appealing to an external value source (God) as justification for good socially-supported behaviour.
b. No God, no consequence.
c. Mutually Assured Destruction = live for today and to hell with tomorrow.
3. The rise of the prominence of business in society and social attention, thereby:
a. Creating an all-encompassing media and government focus on the fortunes of businesses.
b. Changes (good or bad) to individuals, families and communities are not the focus of social (media) attention; rather it is the TSX closing value that is daily measured and reported.
c. The heroes of our culture are the leaders of business, and those who earn the most are identified for idol worship. When was the last time there was a ‘Top-10 Families’ feature in your media where the non-financial accomplishments of an entire family were the basis of attention and social recognition?
d. Those who call for improved benefits or pay for employees are seen as enemies of what is important to a healthy society (healthy businesses and a pro-business social climate)
4. The Globalization movement and establishment of the FTA / NAFTA trade agreements.
a. Creating an uneven playing field between business and labour, where one (business) is free to move between the three North American nations without restriction but labour is absolutely constrained.
b. Business is empowered to sue foreign nations with the capability to compel a nation to act in favour of a business’ demands. Citizens do not have the right to sue a foreign nation without federal government permission (rarely granted).
c. Establishment of a competitive market for labour without a competitive market for residency. A Mexican worker does not experience the same environmental demands of a Canadian worker; the climate discriminates, but these agreements ignore this reality to the detriment of labour.
5. The co-opting of democracy through large corporate donations to political parties. (Thank God for Jean Chretien’s political donation restriction legislation!)
a. This has resulted in the creation of policies and laws that benefit the largest contributors (companies) and neglect of those who contribute little or no funds to candidates (individuals).
b. Laws now treat corporations as equals (or greater) to individuals while not placing the same demands on them in the social realm.
c. The RCMP and other police forces now often act as agents in enforcement of laws that empower corporations against citizens. (RIAA actions in US are an example)
6. The removal of any social contract that may have existed in previous generations of fidelity and loyalty between an employee and employer.
a. Corporations are punished (and officers are legally liable via Fiduciary Laws) if they elect to retain employees in what the market, media or shareholders deem to be an uneconomic manner.
i. The investment laws in our country have been constructed to benefit money over people, in corporate bankruptcy, employees and pensioners are paid after banks and other creditors.
ii. Globalization-oriented laws effectively remove any barriers or penalties on corporations that abandon one community for another.
iii. Labour is now measured as a commodity (ever wonder why it is called Human Resources?); entire departments or sub-corporations are bought and sold (with the employees, contracts, customer lists, etc.) between companies without consultation or involvement of the employees.
iv. Business change decisions are always based upon an economic measurement rather than on one that takes in to account the impact of such decisions on the employees and communities that a company operates in. Corporations have been excused from the social responsibility they can reasonably be expected to have in exchange for a privileged position and permission to extract natural resources or to exploit beneficial tax rules.
7. The transfer of ownership of mass media from islands of community-based competitive enterprises to networks of integrated outlets comprising print, radio, television and Internet-based properties.
a. Consolidation of ownership in to the hands of an elite oligarchy that is publishing a solely pro-business message eliminates any open message that challenges the established pro-business priorities of government.
b. Any public official who proposes policies that run counter to the natural interests of business is pillared across all of these singularly controlled media outlets in such a way as to establish in the public mind that all opinion is against such proposals.
i. When was the last time a left-wing media outlet of any kind successfully launched and lasted in North America?
ii. The CBC’s and NPR’s dependence upon an annually-determined Federal Government operating grant has eliminated any capability for true journalistic independence.
8. The establishment of Private-Public-Partnerships in the building and operation of areas that are traditionally the domain of government (hospitals, jails, policing, schools, roadways, etc.) has interjected a corporate interest in what is fundamentally a broad-based social contract operation.
a. Historically, citizens, via their government, collectively take on the role and responsibility for education, protection, transportation, etc. to the greater benefit of all through a shared responsibility and funding based upon tax revenues. The P-P-P model destroys this in favour of private ownership and wealth creation at the expense of greater public services and absolute public control.
b. The move towards greater reliance on user-pay models for most government-based services abandons the notion of a shared ownership based on citizenship rather than the new notion of a shared experience based upon capability to pay.
c. The interest of the private corporation that often owns and operates these ‘public’ facilities and services remove citizens from the role of shareholder and rights-holder in the management and decision making process.
Ok, perhaps I’ve gotten a bit off track in point 8, but in essence the ‘community’ of our nation where citizens devoted themselves to God, their country, neighbours and the family they lived in while daily practicing a strong ‘Protestant work ethic’ in work they performed for the privileged owners who, like good parents, a good community, and a trustworthy government always looked out for the benefit of citizens first is LONG GONE.
Our society now shouts that God is dead, and we live in a world where countries no longer have true sovereignty, families are no longer valued or esteemed in our society, children are despised and are seen as a drain rather than as a blessing (40 reasons not to have children is a top-selling book!) and corporate commitment to money and not people is required by investment laws and investors.
Is it any wonder why employees despise customers and show no loyalty to employers? They are simply closing the circle that has been built around them by the church, government, family, media and employers.