Bad Customer Service Exposed

One of the United Kingdom’s top authorities on business practices, The Henley Business School has released a paper which indicates that two-thirds of all customers surveyed believe service levels of retailers and various other service-oriented businesses are at an all time low. The report goes on to say that these firms are arrogant and make no effort to understand their customers
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I must admit that I have no first-hand knowledge of business practices in the UK, but I can definitely state that I believe service levels are at an all time low in Canada and the United States. I travel extensively in both countries and have experienced some service issues that I would never have existed even twenty years ago. What I find most perplexing is that during the most economically challenging decade of the past 100 years, businesses everywhere are allowing customers to walk out their doors empty-handed while rude, lazy, disengaged employees continue to receive pay checks! So what is the problem?

Because I am in the business of leadership and personal development training, when I am faced with bad service, I attempt to analyze it and in some cases, I go so far as to point it out to the offending service provider or his/her manager. In most cases, I find businesses that provide bad service are not managed well. In fact, in extreme cases they appear not to be managed at all. Managers in many establishments have stopped being leaders. They have stopped engaging in old-fashioned, hands-on, disciplined leadership. They allow customers to be ignored, bad employee attitudes to live, and poor or non-existent service levels to be the norm.

Twenty-first century management has lost its way in many cases. Until managers start to hold their employees accountable and until managers themselves are held accountable by their bosses, service levels will continue to slide.

Although very important, leadership is about more than setting a good example. Managers should be constantly observing the behaviour of their employees and taking corrective action at the time bad service occurs. They should remove the bad service provider from the floor, away from customers as soon as it is appropriate and tell them what they did wrong.  Employees should know their responsibilities and their obligations to customers in all situations. When they fail to live up to those responsibilities, they must be reprimanded and if improvement does not occur, they should be terminated. Is that wrong? Is it wrong to demand that employees provide good service? If believing that is wrong, I must be living in the wrong century.

Managers should also be made to understand their obligations and responsibilities to customers, employees and their employer before they are allowed to manage. I can hardly believe that some of the nasty, rude, dismissive, and absent service I have witnessed, was carried out while someone with the title of manager was actually on the premises. In many of these cases, the bad service was not even isolated to one or two people. In some cases I have seen establishments with dozens of employees who seemed not to want to provide service to any customers. If you own a retail or service-oriented business, do you know what is going on with your employees? Do you care?

The typical reasons cited for bad service include “too busy, understaffed, new employees and the computers are down.” All of these are simply excuses for bad management. Most importantly, managers who give these excuses are generally poor leaders. They make excuses rather than simply owning up to their responsibilities for bad service and holding themselves accountable. Managers with poor leadership skills are also generally afraid of confrontation. Rather than disciplining a bad service provider, they tend to look the other way and hope that no one notices. Unfortunately for them, as the Henley Business School has pointed out, the world is noticing...big time!

Billions of dollars are lost to bad service world-wide every year. That trend will not improve until the retailers and other service providers take the initiative to regain control by holding managers and employees accountable for impeccable service.

I am looking forward to a future rife with great service. To that end, l would appreciate it you would send me examples of good service that you have recently experienced. Let me have the names and locations of those businesses and I will post them on this blog so that readers will know where the best service providers are. I will not however, post the names and locations of bad service providers because there are simply too many of them!

Please email your good-service examples along with your contact information to wkehl@dlionline.ca.

All the Best!

Wayne Kehl

If you would like some help to improve the customer service levels of your business, please get in touch with us. You can find out more about Dynamic Leadership at www.dlionline.ca .

What Makes A Great Sales Organization?

During the course of my life, I have been a student, an observer and a practitioner of the fine art of making sales.

I have been successful, unsuccessful, frustrated and elated while attempting to create fabulous sales numbers for my companies. Although I do not have all of the answers to sales success, I have learned a few lessons along the way which I will share with you now.

The last company I worked for before starting my current consulting business was an international insurance firm with a large number of offices all over North America. I was the Vice President of Operations in my region and I was partnered with a Vice President of sales. We were responsible for approximately 160 employees in a dozen offices. We worked very well together because we accepted that both of us carried ominous responsibility for the success of our region and that if we did not work as team, we would surely fail.

Lesson number one: Accountability

The first thing we learned was that success requires hard work from everyone involved.

Whenever we lost focus and let up or reduced our drive for more sales our numbers would start to slide and our profitability would begin to wane. It was up to us as leaders to drive the bus and when we lost energy, the entire vehicle lost momentum.

We also learned that our sales-people responded best when we showed a great deal of interest in them, reminding them regularly that it was their responsibility to make a budgeted number of sales. We had to make it clear that just as we were accountable to our executive and shareholders, they were responsible to us and their co-workers to drive the company forward.

When we asked them for buy-in and helped them along the way they bought in but when we focussed on something other than sales effort, they took our lack of acknowledgement as a sign that the pressure was off and not surprisingly, sales dropped off. Holding sales people personally responsible for their sales effort is one of the most important elements of a successful sales organization.

Lesson number two: Support

One of the single most common reasons why people struggle to make sales budgets is a lack of personalized support.

In order to make sales, we learned that we had to accept that everyone needed a different technique when contacting and dealing with clients and that there is no single–best way to make a sale happen. We understood that each sales person naturally behaved differently than the others and that each was driven by different motivations.

We utilized specific assessment tools to understand how each of our sales people thought and we encouraged them to utilize their natural skills and talents to create their own brand of success.

We also learned to accept that everyone is not, and cannot be a superstar. We learned that as much as we had to set minimum goals that must be attained, we could not expect everyone to perform at the same level. Despite varying levels of skill and success everyone mattered. Most importantly, when one of our people was struggling, rather than finding fault or giving up on them, we offered coaching, encouragement and support to rejuvenate their enthusiasm and recharge their passion.

Lesson number three: Teamwork

Any group of people that is assembled for any purpose can only be successful if they operate as a team.

Just as this is true in athletics, it is true in the sales arena. Teams require leaders and leaders require loyal, devoted followers. A team must have a common vision that each member is able to buy into and each player must know his or her position.

We learned that as leaders, we had to reinforce the value of each member of the team from the reception people, to the accounting staff, to the administration department...because without them, the sales people would not survive. We reinforced the fact that without each member of the team paddling as fast as they could, the sales boat would not move forward. We asked them to treat each member of the team with respect all-the-while holding each other accountable for the team’s performance.

We taught them how harmful bad words and bad thoughts amongst team members could be and that intolerance would not be accepted. We let them know that every success was a team success to be shared by all members equally. We asked all team members to carry their weight as best they could and to help other team members when they stumbled. In short we helped them to understand that success was a team endeavour that required the unrelenting effort of each player.

Lesson number four: Lead by example

Leaders in great sales organizations work harder than every person on their team in order to maintain success.

There can be no room on any team for lazy, lacklustre, disengaged sales leaders or managers.Those who set the goals and enforce the activities that create the results must be fully involved and highly motivated. Their dedication to the process must be palpable and measurable. The time they put in to assist their sales force must be as great as, or preferably greater than the time each sales person and support-staff member puts in to make sales happen.

Great leaders work tirelessly and selflessly for the greater good of the team. Great leaders acknowledge that they are under the microscope and that everyone on their team is waiting for them to stumble. The best of them will be helped up by their team members when they fall...the worst will be left behind or kicked to the curb in disgust. They say that it is lonely at the top. As much as there is a smattering of truth to that statement, it can also be very rewarding and highly energizing up there. When you forget your own personal needs and wants, pushing those of your team members to the top, you will soon come to find that you have a second family that will support you and carry you on their shoulders to success.

The bottom line for leaders is that they must never give up, must always stay the course and must always work like their professional life depends on it...Because it does!

Lesson number five: Build your culture

Sales success can be sustainable or fleeting...it is your choice.

Success that is short-lived or sporadic is symptomatic of a weak sales-culture. If you have products or services to sell, you must always put sales activity at the top of your priority list. Let’s face it; you won’t need a receptionist, an accountant, or a human-resources professional if your products or services are not getting into the hands of buyers.

If you are unhappy with your current rate of sales stop what you are doing and regroup. Many leaders believe that if they just do more of what they are currently doing, great things will happen. That may or may not be true depending on the situation. However, if your sales machine is not printing money, there is a good chance it is broken or at the very least is need of a tune up.

The best way to find out why you are not as successful as you would like to be is to do an evaluation of your corporate culture to find out how your employees and your customers feel about it. Once you have communicated with a good sampling of them to find out where the weaknesses are, start building your culture from the ground up all over again.

During the rebuilding process, be honest with yourself and be willing to admit your failings. You must be willing to accept major changes if you want to succeed. Let everyone know that you want to build a powerful, sustainable culture where all of the stakeholders will share in the spoils and where everyone’s participation will be valued and acknowledged. Once the foundation is built, start bricking up the walls with solid, established business practices and employee engagement techniques. If you are not up to date on the practices of highly successful companies or simply do not know where to start, get help from outside professionals to guide you to a better path. Finally, you must be patient. Building a great corporate structure with fabulous sales results takes a lot of perseverance and a good deal of time.

Build your culture one brick at a time and watch your success grow right along with it.

All the Best!

Wayne Kehl

Do Not Allow Anger To Rule Your Life

Do you ever find yourself justifying your anger or actually believing that angry outbursts serve a useful purpose? Do you ever believe that anger is what makes you special? If you have ever thought that being angry is good thing...think again!

Anger should not be allowed to lead you through life.

Once while conducting a performance review, I had the opportunity to have a discussion with an employee about the attitude she displayed with other employee in her workplace. The general observations from others about this person were that she was miserable, unpleasant and downright mean. She was quite aware of her reputation and was completely unrepentant about it.  She actually seemed to take comfort in the fact that she was able to make her mark in life by repelling other people.

Just as some people take comfort in their own despair, some wallow in their own repugnance to others.

This lady did not smile, did not frown, did not laugh; did not cry...she seemed in fact to be completely devoid of any and all emotion. Most of her responses to my questions were comprised of one-word answers, shoulder shrugs and grunts. The more I spoke to her, the more unresponsive she became. Finally, I felt compelled to tell her that I was concerned about her attitude toward me. At that point, she bragged that most people don’t like her attitude and that she had recently enrolled in an anger-management course because of “other issues”.

I asked if anger was a big part of her life and she responded in the affirmative.

At that point I noticed, for the first time, a small curl of a smile at the corners of her lips. That prompted me to ask her if she enjoyed being angry. She quickly responded, with a full-toothed smile, “Yup, I sure do!”

Through further discussion, I learned that this person had lived a very difficult life which included abusive parents, a history of drug and alcohol abuse, and a nasty divorce. It became clear to me that the events of her childhood had left her with a very negative view of the world and a need to escape it through potentially harmful behaviour. Her past also led her to uncontrollable bouts of rage and anti-social behaviour.  Because she was unable to overcome her personal issues, her life was a mess and her future was extremely bleak. Despite the fact that she was clearly spiralling into oblivion, she refused to accept that she needed to change. I have lost touch with her over the years, but I fear the worst.

This lady’s story is much more extreme than most, but many people suffer from the inability to control their emotions.

 Some of those people carry around a well concealed hand grenade filled with explosive rage. For much of the time the grenade is hidden, but often it is just waiting for the pin to be pulled so that it can explode and splatter hot, angry, emotional shrapnel all over anyone unfortunate enough to be in its path of destruction.

Anger is not only wasted energy...it is a powerful, harmful force that has the capacity to destroy lives and end careers.

Psychological science has identified a condition known as “Borderline Personality Disorder” which is known to bring on the symptoms of uncontrollable rage that I have describe here. Theorists and psychologists agree that this disorder is often a result of disturbing traumatic events from an individual’s childhood. Sometimes the person is not even aware of, or cannot remember the event or events that may be causing their distress. Instead, they will often inflict their rage on others, all-the-while justifying it as something positive and a personality trait that other people should simply accept or become accustomed to. What they seem not to understand is that their behaviour is unacceptable in a civilized society and that they are systematically driving people away.

Even people who are not the direct object of their rage will avoid any sort of meaningful relationship with them out of fear and revulsion.

I have known a few angry bosses over the years, but until recently I simply chalked it up to an old-fashioned command and control style of leadership. I now believe that some of the rage I witnessed in those leaders was a result of an undiagnosed psychological or emotional condition. Those leaders were able to hide their conditions behind their positions because unpleasant, angry bosses like Ebenezer Scrooge and Lou Grant were the stuff of popular culture and entertainment. During that era, we all knew that to be a leader, you had to be tough; and to be tough, you had to express anger.

Modern society now agrees that anger toward others is neither normal nor acceptable regardless of one’s position in life.

Psychologists have found that professional “talk-therapy” or coaching can provide extremely good results and a lessening, or complete elimination of inexplicable, long-term, rage events. Of course, that will only work if the individual inflicted with the problem is able to admit to himself or herself that his or her behaviour is unacceptable. They must also be willing to look in the mirror and tell the person looking back that a change is absolutely essential. Acknowledgement of the problem is often much more difficult to endure than the eventual therapy.

If you have feelings of anger that cause fear or discomfort in others, do something about it. Admit that you have a problem and take steps to deal with it. You owe it to yourself to allow tranquility and contentment to overrule the exasperation, rage and despair in your life.

All the Best

Wayne Kehl