While empowering your employees is critical to good customer service, there is another key that often gets overlooked. As the following excerpt from “The Engaged Manager” (by best-selling author David R. Meyer) describes, it is also critical to step back and ensure that your vision, and the objectives that you set to fulfill that vision, actually meet your customers’ needs:
Good objectives start with collaboration. You will
want to ensure that your customers understand and agree with any objectives you
define. Thus, before you start setting the objectives, you need to spend some
time understanding the needs and wants of your customers and identifying how
you can best satisfy their expectations. Most of the time, this is fairly
simple. Work with your customers, to find out what they need from you and when
they need it. That’s the basis for setting the objectives. Certainly there will
be times when their needs and the capabilities of your department to deliver
may be far apart, but by collaborating with them, you can identify and
reconcile those discrepancies.
Setting objectives without consulting your customers
can lead to internal conflict and poor customer service. Likewise, setting objectives
without the input of your team will leave them feeling isolated, unheard, and
unappreciated. If your team does not understand and buy in to the objectives
you’ve set for them, they will not be completely engaged and may not bring
their full potential to the project. In the worst case scenario, the lack of upfront
discussions could put your team in a position of failing to meet the
objectives.
A few years back, I received my Performance Objectives
from my Vice President. They were clear, well written, and certainly
measurable. The primary objective called for the reduction of the installation
interval for customer orders from 55 days from customer signature date to 30
days. The objective was challenging, but I was convinced that we could make the
reduction if we focused our efforts. We needed new tools to help us with this
process, so I added these tools to the objectives of my subordinates. All
worked as planned, and within 60 days we had the interval to about 31 days. I
was happy with our progress and knew that we would quickly achieve the new
goal.
There was only one problem.
Our customers were not happy at all.
Was it an issue of quality?
No……
Were we missing orders?
No…….
The problem was that my staff was pushing hard to
achieve the 30-day interval and was not providing the personal attention to our
customers that our sales department was promising. Unfortunately, the 30-day
goal was our goal, but not the goal of the sales team.
In fact, their goals were in contradiction to our
goals and the more we put pressure on them to reduce the intervals, the less
they were able to achieve their goals.
Who was right?
It really doesn’t matter. Two departments with conflicting
goals ended up hurting our customers.
Can you relate to Dave’s
personal story? Do you include your customers in the goal-setting process for
your organization? If not, are you missing a key opportunity to provide a
unique customer service experience? What can you do in the future to ensure that
your vision and your objectives are meeting, or better yet exceeding, your
customers needs and expectations?
We hope that you enjoyed this
week’s blog. At ECI Learning Systems LLC we are dedicated to improving
productivity and profitability by creating engaged organizations. Our unique
combination of training and personalized coaching, combined with our expertise
in assessments allow us to create a development plan tailored for your success.
Until next time….
Laurie Valaer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
Posts
Thanks again Dave,
ReplyDeleteThe point that people want to take away from this is that while departments have goals and measurements if they are not tied into the overall organizations goals and centered on the customer, the organization will lose.
The Dept may win but when customers are not treated right they will leave.