One Employee Serving One Customer at a Time
A couple of years ago I wrote about some of the struggles Home Depot was experiencing, along with some recommendations for reclaiming the positive brand image they once commanded in the minds of customers – Sacrificing Customer Service – Lessons from Home Depot.
Blogger Alan Gregerman sent me a link to one of his posts in which he states, “This is going to sound strange, but I actually had a great customer experience at Home Depot this week.” He says it sounds strange because, “I’ve come to expect a lot of frustration whenever I shop at Home Depot. Sure I appreciate their low prices and large inventory, but I wouldn’t mind a bit more help on occasion. Or a bit more knowledge, guidance, interest, and engagement.”
Check out his post at Dear Home Depot.
What Alan’s story says to me is this – All of our visions, strategies, and tactics hinge on one employee serving one customer at a time.
If Home Depot, or any other organization, wants to claim a warm spot in their customers’ hearts, they have to engage the hearts and minds of their frontline employees in the effort. The process for engagement is straight forward, but it takes long-term commitment from the organization’s leadership:
- Define what the customer experience is supposed to be – your Service Philosophy and Service Standards.
- Use every communication tool you have to reinforce the importance of customer service, share best practices, customer perspectives, etc.
- Ensure that customer service is a key element of ALL training opportunities.
- Use behavioral interviewing in order to hire applicants who are wired for service excellence.
- Recognize and reward those who live your service values.
- Make service excellence NON-NEGOTIABLE for every member of the organization by building your service values into all accountability mechanisms.
- Identify and remove process obstacles that inhibit delivering excellent service.
The Home Depot associate Alan describes in his blog post is clearly wired for service excellence. If Home Depot can multiply that associate’s enthusiasm by 317,000 (their current staff) they’d really have something. It can be done.
Dennis, you are absolutely right. You’re comment “All of our visions, strategies, and tactics hinge on one employee serving one customer at a time” should be the mantra for all customer service departments.
This circles back to your article on Southwest Airlines (““The Curse of Arrogance;” http://dennissnowblog.com/commentary/the-curse-of-arrogance/#comments) because even for an organization known for its customer service, it all comes down to one employee serving one customer at a time.
I flew Southwest Airlines for the first time recently. I fly a lot for work and it’s odd that I’d never flown Southwest before, but because I’m based in Denver I almost always fly United. United often gets slammed for lousy service (I think they recently ranked something like 11th out of the major U.S. airlines, which is indeed a poor ranking), but honestly, I didn’t receive any better service on Southwest.
I was going to say that it was a completely unmemorable flight, but that’s not quite true; what I do remember is that it didn’t live up to the reputation that Southwest had established for itself.
The airline industry has been hit very hard, and I don’t envy anyone with a customer-facing airline job. It’s hard work, and many, many people have seen cuts in their pay. Even though I have over three decades of customer service experience, I would find it hard to be at the top of my game every day, even as I watched my take home pay and real income shrinking.
That said, it all comes down to one employee serving one customer at a time. I have had many good customer service experiences on United; I’ve had some bad ones too. Southwest did nothing more or better than any of the other airlines I fly. In the end, it comes down to a personal interaction with someone who displays a real commitment to excellent service.
You are spot on about the importance of leadership commitment to build a service culture where every employee steps up and engages with customers.
Another point Alan made is about how customers want to be educated.
This is where Starbucks does such a great job; and it’s not only about their employees – http://upyourservice.com/learning-library/customer-service-education/education-is-the-star-at-starbucks