I called into the call center at Sprint a few months back to get some information about purchasing the new iPhone X. After navigating through a myriad of selections I got to the right person (I think I pressed 2 – 2 – 4 – 6 and some other numbers to get there…not good). I explained what I was looking to do and wanted to know my options for upgrading to the new phone. There were no options…we have one way you can upgrade. Hmmm, not what I was looking for.
After some discussion with the person, it was clear they had been given the script to deliver the one way of getting a new phone…no options. So I started to throw out some options for discussion. The first comment (and ongoing comment) is that I can only tell you about this one way to do an upgrade. So I suggested we get a supervisor involved and see if we can expand the choices and the discussion. After being on hold for a while, they came back and said they talked to their supervisor and there might be another choice available for me to purchase the new phone.
We explored it for a bit and after discussing it further, there were still some questions about how this would work. Again, they had to go talk to the supervisor and see what they could do in this area. To make a long story short, I got what I wanted and came away with the right situation for me on upgrading my phone. BUT…it was not without a great deal of “effort” and “time” on my part to get there. I got what I needed but with an experience that was certainly a lot more painful than it needed to be.
You see, the employee wasn’t “empowered” to really solve my problem…they were there to sell me on what they were told to sell. They weren’t prepared to ask me any questions about what I was interested in doing, just that I needed a new phone. They didn’t want to ask because they wouldn’t have been prepared for that discussion…they weren’t trained to answer questions and solve problems, they were there to give me the one option to get a new phone…which I could have just done on the website.
Employees are only as good as you empower them to be. I know…the word “empower” is so ‘90’s but it is making a major comeback in companies that want to be more Customer Obsessed. Employees can only deliver what they are taught and told to do…otherwise they risk stepping outside their boundaries and doing something management might not approve of…so they don’t. When employees aren’t “empowered” to make the difficult and time sensitive decisions, they don’t.
We can’t blame our employees when they don’t deliver an awesome experience if they haven’t been equipped and empowered to do so. It’s really that simple. If we teach them, give them the tools to solve problems, and help the customer get what they want quickly and easily, we are on our way to delivering an experience the customer will rave about and tell others about. When we don’t do this, the chance of them telling someone else about you is zero…they won’t tell anyone unless it is absolutely awesome or it is terrible.
Arming our employees with the right “tools” and “guidelines” to problem solve and help our customers get what they want as quickly and efficiently as possible, while being incredibly positive, is what moves companies from having “satisfied” customers to having “delighted” customers. That’s the job of the leadership team…not the employees. It’s leadership’s job to equip them, or empower them, to make the decisions necessary to deliver this awesome experience. If leadership doesn’t do this, the employees will fail at delivering this “top shelf” experience to your customers.
It’s not their fault…it’s leadership’s.
Have you empowered your employees to problem solve and do what it takes to give your customers an awesome, incredible, and remarkable experience or will they punt and tell the customer, “I will have to check with my supervisor or manager and see what they will do for you.” This can be the deciding moment for your customer to stay or leave.
And unfortunately, the one group that usually is our “front line of defense” are often times the lowest paid and least trained of anyone in our companies. Why is that? It is our “front door” to the customer and we position it with possibly our least trained employees. We don’t arm them with the skills to solve problems, we turn them into robots to spew out what it is we tell them to say…regardless of who the customer is or what they need. And we wonder why the customer journey starts out on a negative note?
Leaders…this isn’t rocket science. It just needs attention to turn it into something different. It takes focus and a strategy to change the game. What would it be like if every time someone came to your office they started the conversation with you by saying, “I just love to come to your office, the people that greet me are not only super friendly, they are very helpful and can answer a lot of my questions for help me find the answers before we ever meet…they are incredible!” Would that start the meeting with you with a different tone…a different attitude…potentially leading to a different outcome? It does.
Leadership’s role is to be responsible for designing an experience that their customers/clients will absolutely love. And if leaders could deliver the entire experience, maybe this would happen more often. But we can’t…that’s where our employees come into the picture. They need to be an extension of us in delivering this experience and helping our customers get what they want…and rave about it.
If this isn’t happening in your organization, there is a huge opportunity in front of you to differentiate yourself from your competition. Take the lead. Make a commitment to create a strategy to empower your people so they can deliver what you would deliver to your customers…a strategy that will cause your customers to love interacting with everyone in your company. A strategy which will completely differentiate you from your competition. This will change the game for your business.
