Human Resources

Getting team members to understand customer service facts

Serving customers is not a punishment; it is a privilege. That's how I want my team members to think. Customers form the foundation of how my employees make money to support their families. The more delighted customers we have, the more opportunities my team members have to take care of the people most important to them. That's why we never stop talking about customer service. Here are some tools we use to continually remind our team about how important the customer is to all of us.

Customer Service: The Facts

Organizations can expect obvious results when they implement an empowered environment. However, many people fail to realize the impact of the hidden effects of the empowerment process. These hidden benefits can have a more dramatic impact on profitability than a leader might imagine. When one considers the issue of the effective use of resources, the hidden impact of empowerment clearly demonstrates how leaders can effectively marshal the resources they are responsible for.
Many traditional managers fail to understand and comprehend how empowerment can impact their bottom line, as there are a number of hidden costs associated with restricting employee abilities and capabilities. Most are focused on their power and authority and concentrate on ways to maintain their personal power base...

Small business owners frequently juggle a variety of roles within their companies. Creating a balance and effectively managing available time is extremely important to most small businesses. In order to economize and make the most of the available time, you should implement a time management plan.
Get Real. Set realistic goals that are not unreasonable or unattainable. It can be very demotivating to consistently feel as if you have not accomplished anything, simply because you regularly fail to meet unreasonable goals that you've set for yourself. By setting more realistic and attainable goals, you will feel a sense of accomplishment, and often be motivated to work harder.
Know Yourself. When are you most productive? Use the hours of the day when you are most productive to tackle the more difficult tasks...

At the risk of placing substance over style, all leaders must understand this simple truth: style does matter. It is not about matching your belt to your shoes, or accessorizing appropriately for the occasion, but rather understanding the way you go about leading.
Allen rose through the ranks of the military with great ease and retired young with a high rank. Properly prepared for his transition into civilian life, Allen was able to land a great opportunity with an upstart tech firm in the Midwest. Everyone was confident his previous leadership performance would translate to the battlefield of competitive software development. Within months it became obvious that the members of Allen's team were not responsive to the command and control leadership style that Allen was comfortable exercising...

What gets rewarded gets done, so recognize and reward a lot! This is especially so if you want to learn how to change company culture.
First, reward all the traditional categories: sales achieved, goals accomplished, customer compliments received. Then add some spice to really promote efforts on how to change company culture.
Celebrate new accounts, repeat orders, projects completed under budget, money-saving ideas, increased efficiency, and of course, improvements in customer service. To learn how to change company culture, you need to reward the actions you want to become ingrained.
Acknowledge achievements of individuals: most productive person, most consistent performance, most outrageous extra effort. This can also help in efforts to learn how to change company culture...

"I'm sorry, but this just isn't working, I think it's best if we part company."
Have you been on the giving or receiving side of that statement? Do you recall the unpleasant sense of regret, the foreshadowing and worry that led to those words?
A performance-based dismissal is typically preceded by a period of discomfort when everyone realizes there's a bad fit to the job. Remedial steps may be taken in the interest of fairness, but there's a sense that the situation will not improve. During this interim period, productivity dives, momentum is lost, and morale deteriorates as fellow employees watch and wait for the inevitable.
Since dismissals commonly play out like this, it is paramount to simply put the right person in the right place from the start...

You search and screen and interview for the best employees. Days pass, sometimes weeks, as you narrow down your choices (and continue to operate understaffed). You pull the trigger, make the hire, and within days you realize you've made a mistake--sooner if your new hire never even shows.
Let's face it, hiring the right employees is the bane of existence for franchise operators. Yet without top-performing front-line employees and unit-level managers--the face of your franchise--you will not be as successful as you could be. Hiring right often seems a mysterious, unachievable goal lacking any chance of long-term success.
"The challenge is that we really want the cream of the crop and sometimes we end up with the cream of the crap," says Bill Wagner, CEO and co-founder of Accord Management Systems, a company that specializes in behavioral and hiring consulting...

In order to excel in your work, in your life, or as a leader, you need to commit to continuous learning. Many leaders know this, but many more are missing the opportunities for powerful learning that could really help them get ahead on their goals.
Leaders are encouraged to learn "on the job." The problem is that many of us don't. Either because we're too busy, we forget, we don't know what we need to learn, or we don't have the resources we think we need, we end up learning by chance or command. Neither one is very powerful.
Learning by chance means you take opportunities to learn whenever they show up, but you don't necessarily go looking for more. A conference brochure arrives; it seems interesting; you go. A friend recommends a book; it looks good; you read it...

Generally speaking, people like to compete. They like to test themselves and be challenged. Most important, people like to win. Being rewarded for it? That's icing on the cake. It doesn't matter where they're from, what language they speak, or what job they do - people like to succeed and be acknowledged for it. Because I consider myself a coach, and I believe in positive energy and positive reinforcement, I believe that incentives are the single greatest tool I have for motivating my workforce...;and they can be for you, too.
Incentives work - whether the person receiving them is the manager of a retail business, an executive at a large corporation, or an entry-level employee making minimum wage. And incentives don't have to be pure cash, although I have yet to find a team member who would ever turn it down...

When great front-line hourly employees quit, most managers take it personally--and with good reason. For more than 20 years, employee exit interview research has been telling us that the #1 reason the best people leave is because they feel they are being poorly managed. In other words, these folks joined the company and then quit the manager.
Just imagine how frustrated you would have to be with your job to decide to go elsewhere. That's how dissatisfied all the outstanding people who have left your organization have felt. If your people truly are your greatest assets, then the way your managers and supervisors manage those assets is the crucial key to your organization's success.
Whether you're recruiting field and area managers or hourly employees, there are five specific things everyone wants from their job, no matter what their position...

Irate customers. No matter how good you are at what you do, what business you are in, or where it is located, you will at some point find yourself facing an irate customer. Maybe a product was flawed, a delivery was late, or a charge was inaccurate. How you deal with that customer not only will determine how he or she feels about your organization, but how you feel about yourself.
When you are able to turn an irate customer into a satisfied customer, you will gain confidence in your ability to diffuse a volatile situation and to evoke a positive outcome.
When most people come in contact with an irate customer, their first instinct is to turn and run. Dealing with a customer who has a problem and is upset about it, can be more than a little daunting...

Zane Tankel is not waiting on any government job programs to help his business. The Applebee's franchisee is taking matters into his own hands at his 34 restaurants in the New York City area.
His plan is to continue to move ahead creating jobs and incentives for those he would potentially hire as part of his growth for 2012.  That's not surprising, Tankel thinks big. He has expanded his Apple-Metro company by 10 restaurants since the recession began in 2008. 
What is the secret to Tankel's success in uncertain times and what tips can he offer other business owners as they head into the New Year in uncertain economic times? He has boiled down his best thinking into the following areas:
1. Maximize Guest Experience To Ensure Brand Loyalty
Now more than ever, when consumers are counting pennies and gravitating towards value spending - it is essential for every business to deliver on the promise of brand potential...

Nearly every company in the world gives lip service to the idea that "our people are our greatest asset." Yet when the Conference Board Survey was released last year, employees were the unhappiest they have been in their 22 years of tracking job satisfaction rates. Around the same time, CNNMoney reported a survey that indicated 84 percent of Americans are unhappy with their current job. And last June, Mercer's "What's Working" survey found that one in three U.S. employees are serious about leaving their current jobs.
Why is this lack of happiness at work important? Job satisfaction is not only the key predictor of turnover rates, in The Happiness Advantage, I make the research case for the fact that the single greatest advantage in the modern economy is a happy and engaged workforce...

Some people wait for the future to happen. Others create their futures. The former depend on the luck of the draw while the latter cut their own deal.
How do you create your own future? By forming a vision and expressing it through a mission statement. Your dream now glitters on the horizon of the future. But you are standing in the reality of the here and now. How do you close the distance? You can't dream your way into the future. You must have a plan. You have to know where you want to go and decide how you're going to get there. The important word is "how." The word "if" won't take you there. You must approach your future with a sense of certainty that your dream is achievable.
Hannibal, the great general from ancient Carthage, once asserted: "We will either find a way, or make one...

I can't say enough about the importance of empowered employees in helping a business survive and grow, even in the worst of economic situations. When you empower your employees to make decisions quickly to take care of your customers, the results will be amazing: increased customer loyalty, increased sales, decreased employee turnover, and word-of-mouth advertising that is less expensive and more credible than anything you could buy.
Most executives agree that employees, particularly frontline employees who deal directly with customers on a daily basis, should be empowered to do whatever it takes to solve customers' problems, often they are merely giving lip service to that concept.
Most employers--and employees--actually fear empowerment...

How You Can Motivate Your Employees To Be More Productive
Now, more than ever, organizations are looking for ways to motivate their employees to be more productive. The volatility of the economy is forcing organizations in every industry to look for ways to do more with less. The question is: What will motivate your employees?
Most managers would instantly respond, "Money." They couldn't be more wrong. While we all want to be paid a decent wage for our work, money will not motivate us to improve our performance or productivity. What will? Recognition.
The need for recognition and praise is right up there with the need for food, water, and shelter. We all want to feel valued, to be recognized for our contributions. Far too many executives, however, put more emphasis on monetary rewards than they do on recognition, costing their companies more financially and doing nothing to motivate their employees...

We've all heard the platitudes about having a positive attitude. But does it really make a difference in the workplace? It is an interesting question since none of us are perfect and attitude may not be our strong suit.

A 2010 study by Stanford Research Institute and Carnegie Mellon Foundation with Fortune 500 CEO's found that 75 percent of long term job success depends on people skills, while only 25 percent depended on technical knowledge. The soft skills seem to matter the most. Franchisors and franchisees want team players and people who can work well with each other.

The soft skills needed are:

The best part of my job is being invited to speak to associations and corporations all over the world about the best ways to find, hire, and retain great hourly employees and their managers. I never fail to learn a lot from the folks in attendance, and these occasions are often the start of great long-term working relationships.
About six months ago, I got to chatting with a multi-unit owner attending his company's annual expo and we decided to explore whether we might work together to improve his hiring results. When I did the requisite needs analysis, we found that the areas with less-than-satisfactory results had the same root cause as those of most of my clients over the past 25-plus years: the system was written to meet the needs of HR professionals rather than those of the hiring managers in the field...

Last time I discussed embracing fear and love as part of the leadership experience. I explained how those who actively use the experience of fear and love daily in their attempts to change the world for the better are extreme leaders. Now it's time to take a LEAP into leadership.

Extreme leaders must take a Radical LEAP (love, energy, audacity, proof) daily. Here's how.

L: Cultivate love. The extreme leader's personal credo is akin to this theme: Do what you love in the service of people who love what you do. Many consider the emotion of love to be inappropriate in business; they believe that good business people keep their hearts out of their work. The opposite is true. It's the heart that brings the fire of creativity to bear and inspires drive, loyalty, and leaps of innovative brilliance...

It takes a creative mind to exercise leadership in the 21st century. In fact, it's not enough for the leader to be creative. The people who are led must also be taught to be creative.

If change is the norm for this century, then innovation is the engine of change and knowledge is its fuel. If all the knowledge in your company is stored in just one brain, then you're going to be running on empty pretty quick. Successful organizations will be those that spread knowledge throughout all levels and encourage people at all levels to apply that knowledge in creative ways.

When the leader hogs all the knowledge, then nobody knows what to do until the leader gives the word. Creative leaders don't tell people what to do; they help people decide for themselves what to do...