A barista’s job is to make coffee – as simple as that. If the job description is so simple, why have baristas become one of the hippest jobs in the service industry? In part because someone clever realized that a charming, engaging barista would make people want to come back for more. It’s not just about the coffee. It’s the human experience.
Being human isn’t something that most companies strive for, but they should. In business, we call it customer experience, and this is where the lessons from a Barista begin. It’s a lesson I experienced first-hand as a customer of an organization that puts their governing Act ahead of engaging authentically with customers. Interactions guided by obligation will never lead to a customer service culture, which many organizations have discovered is a competitive advantage.
I recently came to verbal blows with a property management company about arrears on my account due to a monthly fee returned NSF. I learned about it 3 months later when I received notice of a pending lien against my property. Let me be clear that I am only too happy to take responsibility and pay for default payments, but their punishment didn’t fit the crime. I didn’t receive their one mode of correspondence outlined in the Act because of something that was out of our control – the postal strike. In an increasingly heated conversation about their policy for notifying clients in the context of a postal strike, a company representative maintained that they had operated in accordance with the Condominium Act. They were under no obligation to call or email to ensure notifications were received by customers during the postal strike. When she suggested I hang up and go read the Act, we had bottomed out.
And that’s when it hit me: this wasn’t about their accounts receivable policies and procedures. This was a culture issue. As long as the company was talking Obligations and I was talking Customer Service, we were speaking different languages. We couldn’t understand each other. We both became increasingly frustrated.
Obligation is Not Culture
In regulated companies and government agencies, there is a risk of misinterpreting governing legislation for cultural direction. On the surface it’s an appealing proposition for management: the legislation tells us what to do, and in turn we prescribe what our people must do to act in accordance with its terms. No more, no less. There is little need to let go of control or worry about frontline staff going rogue. It’s simple. It’s black and white. It feels deceptively safe.
In reality, it’s not safe at all and will eventually erode value. Whether regulatory legislation governing an organization, or a job description outlining individual role responsibilities, these prescribed obligations provide the bottom threshold below which organizations and individuals should not fall. They are mechanisms to mitigate value erosion, not guidance for value creation.
Cultural Competitive Advantage
In today’s competitive environment, minimum thresholds of obligations don’t cut it. Regardless of your business – private, public or agency – it’s not good enough. People expect more. Organizations operating in competitive markets will eventually lose business and employees to competitors who embrace the value of a customer service culture. It’s at the heart of cultural competitive advantage.
Even government agencies and monopolies are beginning to realize that a customer service culture is simply good business. When organizations make transacting with them easier, it enables smoother operations internally and externally. Less time and energy are wasted enforcing rules, managing resistance and meting out punishments for failure to comply.
A customer service culture creates value through repeat business, loyalty and positive referrals. It also increases employee engagement and job satisfaction. Hardly surprising because it empowers frontline employees to apply good judgment to solve issues for customers and constituents. Customer service cultures put the human experience at the forefront, and relegate rules and obligations to the “when-things-go-irreparably-wrong” pile.
And there’s the rub: leading and enabling a self-directed, customer-focused workforce requires very different mindsets and skills than enforcing black and white rules and obligations. We’ll explore this in more detail in another instalment.
As a starting point, here are 3 questions to ask yourself about the cultural tone you are setting for your organization and your people:
- What is the key frustration that people have in dealing with our organization?
- What value would be unlocked if we could solve for this and make it easier to engage productively with us?
- What control could I relinquish as a leader to make this work more smoothly for my people and our customers?
