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The Power of Your Employees By Ed Romson, CEO, Rocair Corporation I would like to propose something to you that may be counter to your current business practices. I would like you to give the employees that deal directly with your customers more power to make decisions that increase customer satisfaction. Moving the approval point for actions that directly affect the customer closer to the customer has proven to be very effective in improving satisfaction and in generating more revenue per transaction. Consider this. One of the things that customers want is a quick solution to their problem or question. If that solution requires replacing a product, extending a warranty or spending money in some way, many companies have a very structured way of approving the action. Many times the person dealing with the customer has to get approval from a superior who is not present. This takes time and causes the customer to wait to be satisfied. It is my belief that if the approval point is moved closer to the customer everyone benefits. I am proposing that these decisions, even the ones that involve substantial sums of money, be made by your front line staff. There must be controls and checks and balances on this process. However, studies have shown that by doing this you will actually save money and increase customer satisfaction. This applies equally to employees who work in person with your customers and your contact center agents. Let us look at the process in detail by looking at a real example. Last week my mobile phone failed. I admit I did a dumb thing and plugged the phone in the wrong outlet, thereby damaging the phone. I needed a replacement phone. I was traveling out of town for the weekend and needed to talk to three people who were working on a project for me. I went to the mobile phone store to get a replacement. The young person there wanted to be helpful, but since I had "fried" the phone she was required to have it repaired, and that would take a week to ten days to get the phone back. I asked for the loan of a phone over the weekend so that I could stay in touch with my team. In order to do that she had to check with her supervisor and he was not available. Since I was on my way out of town, I could not come back in two hours as she suggested. I will not bore you with the details of the argument that took place, but I will say that I left the store as a very dissatisfied customer. I went to a competing cellular carrier, signed up for a new account, got a brand new, superior quality phone and left on my trip. By not empowering the young lady to make the decision to loan me a phone the company did several things. They lost a customer and lost the revenue that I would have paid them. They also created a dissatisfied customer in the market who is telling everyone I know not to do business with this company. Customer service industry statistics show that a dissatisfied customer will tell nine other people about their experience. This company could have given the employee the authority to make the decision to loan me a phone, perhaps with a monetary deposit. They could have even allowed her to find a creative way to solve the problem. This new power would need to be accompanied with controls that would guard against abuse of that power. In this case, her decision would be reviewed on a daily or weekly basis by her supervisor and she would be counseled about the decisions that were wrong. Once she had proven that she could make those kinds of decisions the review process could be reduced, but that process needs to remain in place in order to identify trends of abuse before they grow too big. In my experience, when employees are empowered to make customer satisfaction decisions and their decisions are monitored, the company actually saves money. Once the employee knows and understands the limits, they are less likely to use the give-away option than a supervisor. I have reviewed records of companies where the agents were very stingy (tacaņo) with giving away product or services while the supervisors gave something away every time they encountered an angry customer. I have also found that the people closest to the customer understand the situation the best and understand what will satisfy the customer. They can make better, and cheaper, decisions than someone who is removed from the situation. Do employees need a lot of training when you give them this kind of decision making power? An article in Latin Trade1 about Companhia Energetica de Minas Gerais (CEMIG), a power generation and Distribution Company in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, indicates that you do not. When this company was acquired by a US company, the managers and employees were allowed to make decisions of the kind we have been talking about. They were never trained but their actions were reviewed and teams of workers and supervisors discussed the results and learned by doing. The results were very good. The employees were happier and they found that while people did make mistakes, they did not make any more mistakes than a centrally managed operation. By giving your employees the power to decide what actions to take to keep the customer satisfied, you will increase customer satisfaction, increase worker satisfaction and in the long term, reduce costs and increase revenue. A process of check and balances insures that the employees are using the power correctly and will show you the improved results over time. 1Poole, C. (1999). Latin Trade (English), 7(2), 30.© Copyright Rocair Corporation. All rights reserved. |
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