"Clients Do Not Come First"
The full quote is
“Clients do not come first. Employees
come first. If you take care of our
employees, they will take care of the clients”.
If you’re interested, this comes from Sir Richard Branson,
founder of the Virgin Group and one of the UK’s best-known entrepreneurs.
Sir Richard makes a good point: if we look after our people,
they will look after our customers.
During my time as a consultant working with other businesses, I’ve had
the privilege of working with leaders who can best be described as “inspiring”
– their staff would literally walk through walls for them, and it shows in the
way they deal with customers and with each other. There’s no case of “Us and Them” (“us” being
the workforce and “them” being faceless management) but more “our business and
we’re proud of it”.
If I find that I’m not getting the best out of someone, I
first have to ask the most difficult question, “Am I the problem?” I have yet
to encounter (with rare exceptions) people who come into work deliberately
intending to sabotage everyone else’s efforts.
If the poor performance isn't typical of them, something’s wrong and
it’s up to us to sort it out.
There’s a lot of literature (and consultancy service) out
there to show organisations how to “engage” their employees. The mistake many make is in thinking that
only money motivates people, or that by providing a brightly-decorated
workspace, everyone will be happy. These
– amongst other factors - go some way to creating the “right” atmosphere (no
one wants to work for free in a dingy office, after all), they key is how we treat others.
If customers are treated well because the people looking
after them are treated well, they’ll come back for more (who wouldn’t?). Instead of looking for “quick fixes” (money,
benefits, for example), we need to look at how we treat our people.
I have spent more than half my life
delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to
“emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in international financial
services around the world running
different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide
solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses,
charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An
international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of
services. For strategic questions that
you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Customer Care, Teamwork
It's How You Handle It
I recently experienced
a case of “misunderstanding” where I thought I was buying one product, but the
other party was under a different impression.
The result was that I ended up paying for a product I didn't want and
then being charged extra for the service that I actually wanted in the first
place.
My decision was to cut my losses on the basis that if the
other side couldn't understand my needs and didn’t check, then I shouldn’t deal
with them. The transaction was done on what the service provider called their
“Live Chat’ tool and, looking back at the script, it seemed clear to me that I
was asking for one thing, but got another.
So how could both sides have handled it better…
- Could I have been clearer in my writing (especially as I
didn't know how well the other party understood “my English”?
- Should the service provider have double-checked their
understanding and told me what I was getting so that there was no potential for
misunderstanding or ambiguity?
- It’s one of those situations where, on looking back, one can
only learn from it, especially that we
can never waste too much time:
- Checking that we
have understood what’s going on;
- Checking that the other person has really understood what’s
going on.
When someone says, “I didn't understand,” then whose problem
is it? Ours for not checking their
understanding or theirs for not doing so?
We’re normally in such a hurry to “get things done” that we
tend to assume that the other person understands what we need. In a situation where we’re talking to someone
of the same age, background, culture, educational and social level that may be
reasonable, but how often in our globalised business world is this really
likely to happen? When I call my credit
card “Hotline”, I can be speaking to an operator in Mumbai or Manila, depending
on the time of day.
How we handle
things is up to us. The better we learn
and the better we do this, the more likely we’ll succeed in our endeavours.
I have spent more than half my life
delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to
“emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in international financial
services around the world running
different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide
solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses,
charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An
international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of
services. For strategic questions that
you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Customer Care, Selling
Leadership, Not "Leavership" …
It’s always
interesting when I go to a client’s offices and watch the interaction of the
leadership team with others. With some,
they’re clearly very hands on and supportive.
Others can to be more “fire and forget” types.
By “fire and forget” I mean that they issue an instruction
and then leave it to others without taking the time to check if their
instructions have been understood and that there aren't any problems along the
way. Some people work well under this
type of arrangement. They’re happy to
receive an instruction, work out what needs doing, ask for any clarification
needed and then get on with it.
Others may need time to think, assess any likely problems
and then get back to the leader. By this
time, the latter may already be engaged in other activities and have “no time”
(famous last words…). The leader may
also need to “check in” from time to time to make sure that all is “on course,
on time”, otherwise they may get a nasty surprise at the end when that deadline's due.
As leaders, we tend to forget two important things when it
comes to our people. The first is that we
are accountable for them and for their
actions as well as to them, especially if that includes delegating projects or parts of projects
delegated by our leaders. The other is
that, although some may work well without being supervised (if at all), the
nature of the project or the deadline may require us to follow up from time to
time to make sure there won’t be any nasty surprises. Some leaders do this through weekly (or even
daily) team briefings. Others take a
more informal approach and stroll up to the person’s desk and have what seems
like a relaxed “chat”.
I’ve found that different styles suit different people (both
leaders and their direct reports). Personally,
I like to know on a regular basis that all is in order and whether anyone needs
help.
I have spent more than half my life
delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to
“emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in international financial
services around the world running
different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide
solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses,
charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An
international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of
services. For strategic questions that
you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Leadership, Productivity, Strategy, Teamwork
