"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.
Labels: Customer Care, Teamwork
posted by William Martin @ 08:21
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