Some Employees Aren’t Easy to Replace…
Yes, you can replace the body, but not someone who’s dependable, hard-working, dedicated, knows the systems and customers.
Unless we’re running a sole proprietorship, we depend on people to make and/or to deliver the products/services that our business provides to its customers.
Not every one of these people will be a “high-flyer” destined for the “C-Suite” or chairmanship. Many more will simply be, as already mentioned, dependable, hard-working, dedicated, good with their customers and “good at their job”. It makes little sense to destroy this value - how much does it cost us to replace someone in terms of lost goodwill, knowledge (both of the business, its products and systems and of its customers)?
Some organisations are said to take the view that they should be removing the lowest tier of performers on an annual basis. Part of the reason is to give the “up-and-coming high-flyers” a chance to move up the ladder (until they’re finally promoted as far as they can go) or perhaps to encourage all employees to perform at the highest level (but there'll still be "lower-performing" people). Whilst admirable in its own right, the risk of such a policy is to promote unhealthy competition, back-stabbing, resentment, low morale and loss of systems and customer knowledge.
We don’t want people to feel complacent because they’re “indispensable” but we do need to maintain a balance between “removing dead wood” and simply promoting a toxic climate of fear.
In our own business, experience is what counts the most in the advice we give. We’re lucky enough to have people who are dedicated and hard-working when needed, but the only time we would ask someone to leave is if they’re being “carried” by the rest of the team. Mercifully, this has happened only once. The only other occasion has been when the member of staff concerned destroyed morale in the team. The day after they had left, the change in atmosphere and attitude amongst the team was incredible!
People management is never easy. However, we need to be aware of the “move out the low performers” attitude dominating our business and distracting us from our true purpose: serving our customers.
I deliver change in markets ranging from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience 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.
Labels: Customer Care, Leadership, Productivity, Strategy
The Cost of Getting it Wrong
My wife and I had an experience that just went to show what the costs of “getting it wrong” can be.
Without going into detail, we’d decided we needed to carry out a certain piece of admin which involved adding me to a bank account. My wife had called in advance to find out what documents were required and these we duly prepared.
On the day, we went to the bank with the documents we’ve been told to bring only to be told that two additional documents were needed.
No apology. No acknowledgement that we had just spent an hour out of our business (total two full-time hours) to go there. No suggestions of how to remedy the situation (that was left to my wife!)
We managed to catch the manager who spoke to the staff member with whom my wife had spoken before. That person claimed they had tried to call my wife back to advise of the additional documentation needed but had not gone through. To be fair, my wife had been somewhere where receiving calls was impossible, so if they had tried calling her at this time, they wouldn’t have succeeded. However, the next day she was back and could’ve received calls. They also had an email address which could’ve been used. It wasn’t.
The costs? To the bank concerned, nothing in financial terms but a loss of faith in their professionalism. In fact, there will be a financial cost as we decided to move that particular part of business to a competitor… Oh, and a negative customer experience story to tell.
To us? As mentioned earlier, the time spent getting documents together, two hours away from our business at the bank (that cost can be quantified in financial terms) and general annoyance.
The advantage, however, was that we now had valuable information on how that organisation did business.
“Getting it right” can be extremely challenging when one’s faced with staff turnover, changing regulations, and a host of other factors. However, finding solutions to a problem that one has oneself caused is well within our control. The first step would have been an apology (which we finally got an hour later, and grudgingly, from the manager).
It takes little effort to move one’s service standard from “mediocre” to “good”. However, many organisations don’t realise that this is all it will take to differentiate themselves from their competition.
As business leaders, our job’s to make sure that our services and products are the best they can be and that, if any problems arise, they are handled quickly, professionally and show the customer why they were right to do business with us.
I deliver change in markets ranging from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience 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.
Labels: Customer Care, Leadership, Selling
“We’re Experiencing High Call Volumes”
How many times have we been faced with this message or similar from a service provider saying that they are unable to respond promptly to our query?
As we move further along the digital path, service and product providers are increasingly moving toward digital platforms and artificial intelligence (AI) to cope with customer enquiries. In some cases, they’re also using “live” call centres but the problem with the latter is that, at times, they don’t seem to be sufficiently manned.
This is understandable, perhaps, in an age where part-time employment is becoming more common and people work shifts. To control costs, providers put a certain number of “agents” in their call centres at any one time to handle predicted volumes.
Things break down, however, when there are insufficient agents to handle high numbers of incoming calls. One would expect this to be around the end of the month (when salaries are paid), the end of the quarter and the end of the year.
There will be other times, of course, such as when there is a “service outage” in a provider’s online system. These can’t be predicted and it will hardly surprise anyone to receive either a text warning or a recorded message that “All of our agents are busy…”.
The question is: are these providers investing sufficiently in “human” resources? People still tend to trust other people more than online services to solve certain problems and we shouldn’t be surprised in turn if, when there’s an emergency in a highly-charged emotional situation, their reaction is to pick up the phone.
AI’s still in its infancy when it comes to answering queries and we’ve probably all experienced occasions when “the system” simply can’t answer our question (usually because it can’t understand it!). The better systems in this case will transfer the customer to a “live” agent. Others will simply give up.
The debate between “insufficient investment and people” and “cost-control” will continue to rage for the foreseeable future. No doubt, providers do their best to cater for most situations but they still have a fair way to go.
As businesses, we can only monitor the rate, volume and timing of incoming request requests and calls and on a statistical basis do our best to predict when things will go wrong. It would be even better if we could have a “reserve pool” of operators who could be summoned at a moment’s notice to help out in times of unexpectedly high volumes of calls.
I deliver change in markets ranging from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience 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.
Labels: Crisis Management, Customer Care, Productivity
