In this post we’re talking about why your managers are key to delivering exceptional customer service. This is a vast and complex subject so we’re not going to get into the all the intricacies, but it will give you an insight into our approach. We’ve successfully applied our unique framework and methodology to over 400 managers, so we’re totally confident of the positive impact we can deliver.
Why are managers key to delivering great customer service?
In most organisations, frontline managers have perhaps the most challenging job of all. That’s because they are responsible for leading and motivating teams of usually around 10 – 15 staff who collectively may touch hundreds of thousands of customers and prospects every year. it’s critically important that your managers have appropriate frameworks and methodologies in place. Managers’ key responsibility is towards your customers, and to serve them effectively they must become true customer champions.
“An employee’s motivation is a direct result of the sum of interactions with his or her manager.”
Changing perspectives
The main challenge in turning managers into customer champions is to get them start with the customer in mind. Typically, when we first engage with managers we find their perspective is focused internally, on processes and systems. Their natural language is that of the internal environment they inhabit. So we facilitate a change in their perspective and alter their thinking to create empowered agents of change who are motivated to deliver customer service excellence. Backlogs, poor quality work and rework are all assessed not only for their impact on operational efficiency, but also for their impact on customer experience. Managers learn to think not only in terms of “how can I best solve resolve this challenge”, but also in terms of “as a customer, how are they effected, how would it feel as a customer, and how are they likely to respond”.
Setting the tone
Your managers set the standard for your operational teams to follow. So when a manager isn’t able or willing to demonstrate appropriate behaviours, this can quickly become amplified throughout the team. If the team is engaging with thousands of customers every week, then there is a much higher potential for poor customer outcomes.
We ensure your mangers think about and understand precisely what behaviours they should be embedding in their teams to create energised, motivated and dynamic teams that deliver exceptional customer service. Achieve this, and the impact on customers becomes a positive one.
“A key to achieving success is to assemble a strong and stable management team.”
Facilitating change to deliver exceptional service
According to traditional thinking, significant organisational change requires a change of CEO.Yet the reality is that organisational change is most rapidly achieved by delivering cultural and behavioural change at team manager level. And this is where the greatest opportunity for improvement usually lies. A failure to implement effective frameworks and methodology for team managers will result in multiple teams of people all acting sub-optimally. Thats 100s of people impacting on thousands of customers. So however strong your brand, and however efficient your internal processes, if you have even two or three managers performing poorly, the impact to your customers can be widespread. And the impact to your business can be severe.
Investment in training delivers fantastic returns
We invest a huge amount of time realigning managers and staff’s perspectives and changing mindsets. And we know that to deliver positive change we must ensure that managers know what good looks like. Yet too many of the mangers we speak to have had little or no investment in their training. Many have just a basic level of compulsory training, and they represent the minimum standard required to do the most basic of jobs. But we know that by using the right training techniques and using the right frameworks, we can quickly teach them to be the best they can be. This breeds greater motivation, greater energy and dynamism, and creates a powerful knock-on effect throughout the team.
The difference between knowing and understanding
Today, most of us know how to drive a car. Or at least we think we do. But when you compare most people’s skills to an F1 driver or a rally driver, you quickly realise just how little we know. F1 drivers and rally drivers race using all their senses, assessing risks, evaluating options and responding to dangers, all at high speed. By investing time and effort in the right training, they have gained a deep understanding of complex driving techniques, so they know precisely how to get maximum performance from their machines. Team management is no different, and with the right training your managers can learn how to get maximum performance from their teams, and deliver exceptional service.
Ask yourself
Do we know what sort of manager we want in our Operations?
Does that manger reflect the team we want?
Does that team reflect the customer experience that we want to deliver?
Do our managers know what good looks like and have we given them the tools to deliver this?
Do our managers know what their best is, and is their best good enough?
