Service attitudes
From PLN
Service attitudes
Primarily items from Leader's Digest on attitudes toward service--and how services are received.
Customer-centric organizations
Harvard Business Online’s ad for an interactive course on CD really caught my eye:
- Customer-centric organizations, where customers are everybody's responsibility and the language of the customer is key.
That’s an organization where all members of the staff from the bottom to the top embrace the customer as their responsibility and speak the same language as their customers.
Yes, libraries offer Spanish-language story hours in Hispanic neighborhood. But what about our vernacular? What does Circulation mean to library customers? What about Reference? Subject? Keyword? Are we learning to speak our customers’ language or still forcing them to speak ours?
Breaking the tradeoff between efficiency and service
Frances X. Frei’s article in the November 2006 Harvard Business Review discusses ways service businesses need to deal with customer variability. Even though Ms. Frei focuses on service businesses, her article provides useful insights for libraries. The first step in managing customer variability is understanding the forms it can take.
- Arrival variability. The resulting inefficiencies have inspired lots of solutions, including those in W. Earl Sasser’s Match Supply and Demand in Service Industries.
- Request variability. Customers’ requests can vary widely and that “poses real challenges for virtually every kind of service business.”
- Capability variability. Some “customers perform tasks easily and others require hand-holding.”
- Effort variability. It’s up to your customers (not you) how much effort they put into a “service interaction.”
- Subject preference variability. Not every customer has the same definition of being “treated well.”
Managers must choose whether to try to accommodate customer variability or reduce it. The secret to success lies in correctly diagnosing the behavioral problem, designing a mutually beneficial role for customers, and testing new approaches. The whole article is worth reading and has examples of companies’ successes and failures, including Netflix, which has capitalized on customers’ resentment of late fees from other DVD-rental companies. (Frances X. Frei, “Breaking the tradeoff between efficiency and service”, Harvard Business Review, November 2006, Vol. 84, No. 11. Available on EBSCOhost.)
Service with a very big smile
The bigger employees’ smiles, the happier their customers! Researchers tracked 173 customer-employee encounters in coffee shops, scoring the employees’ “smile strength” at various points in the transaction. The bigger the employee’s smile, the more likely customers were to view that person as competent and the encounter as satisfying.
But requiring employees to smile can backfire! Forcing workers to act friendly when they don’t feel friendly can lead to job burnout and depression. Forced smiles also look phony, and customers know a fake when they see one.
Managers need to create an environment that encourages genuine smiles, and, the researchers suggest, “hire happy people.” ("Service with a very big smile," Harvard Business Review, May 2007. Free! Just click on the link.)
Emotional intelligence on the front line
Managers need to focus on the interactions that are important to customers--and on how their frontline staff handle those interactions.
“Many consumer-facing businesses perform poorly on the front line.” What’s missing is “the spark between the customer and frontline staff--the spark that helps transform wary or skeptical people into strong and committed brand followers. That spark and the emotionally driven behavior that creates it explain how great customer service companies earn trust and loyalty during ‘moments of truth’: those few interactions (for instance, a lost credit card, a canceled flight, a damaged piece of clothing or investment advice) when customers invest a high amount of emotional energy in the outcome.” Superb handling of these moments requires a response that puts the customer’s emotional needs ahead of the company’s.
One study showed that after a positive “moment of truth” at a bank, over 85% of the customers surveyed bought additional products; but when things “turned sour”, 70% reduced their commitment.
(Marc Beaujean, Jonathan Davidson, and Stacey Madge, “The ‘moment of truth’ in customer service,” McKinsey Quarterly, 2006, No. 1, and “Emotional intelligence on the front line,” The McKinsey Quarterly Chart Focus Newsletter, May 2007.)
Leadership that focuses on the customer--really
All too often genuine customer focus remains more theory than practice. Organizations often become inward focused, and while they think they’re focused on their customers, they’re really not. How can you make customer focus a reality in your organization?
- Demonstrate a genuine commitment to customer focus. Mandate that managers have regular direct contact with customers.
- Ensure that employees understand what’s at stake. Help staff see the link between what they do and long-term results.
- Enable all employees to address customers’ needs proactively. If staff have the power to address problems and the tools to take action, they’re more likely to make customer focus a habit.
- Ensure that your organization recognizes and rewards customer-focused behavior. Publicize “employees’ customer-focused actions”.
- Establish “systems that communicate customer insights among employees,” all the way to the top. Create processes that allow staff to easily share best practices with one another.
“Not only will the organization’s customers be more satisfied and more loyal, but chances are that its workforce will be, too.”
Anne Field, “Leadership that focuses on the customer--really,” Harvard Management Update, July 2007. Available on EBSCOhost or from Harvard Business Online for $4.50.)
The spirit of service
I read an article recently about the importance of the spirit of customer service in a retail store that applies to libraries as much as it does to stores. Every library (and every store) has employees “who would clearly rather be anywhere than...serving customers.” That’s too bad because the interaction between customer and the person behind the counter says a lot about the store (or library).
Every one of your customers needs to be handled “with a ’spirit of service’--an attitude that communicates the desire to make a difference in the life of each customer... In the end, it’s the employee, not the company that makes the encounter a memorable one.”
When things aren’t going well, stellar customer service is even more important. “It is imperative that every salesperson remember that no matter how bad things are going for them, the customer could care less--they merely want to be served.”
Every person who has contact with your customers needs to realize how much their attitude will add to--or detract from--the customer’s experience. Their attitude determines what the customer tells others about their experience. Consider this: every customer talks to an average of 30 people every 48 hours! “Similarly, if a store has 20 salespeople and each assists 25 people in a given day, it means that their spirit of service could be shared with 15,000 people in a matter of two days.”
What kind of impact do the staff in your library make on your customers (or users, or patrons or whatever)? Remember, it’s the employee, not necessarily the library, that makes the lasting impression.
(Mark Hunter, “The spirit of sales service,” Sales & Marketing Management’s managesmarter, Oct. 12, 2007.)
Quality is a relative term!
How do we know how our patrons will view a planned new service, and what can we learn from the for-profit sector?
The first lesson is: “Quality is a relative term... You can only assess quality by looking at an idea through the eyes of a potential customer.”
Take, for example, CVS MinuteClinics, which provide diagnostic services and treat simple, everyday maladies. MinuteClinics fill a specific, previously unmet need. (I love ours!) They’re “quicker, simpler, and cheaper” than going to a primary care physician. And the quality of their services is better. They can’t compete when a complicated condition needs treatment, but that’s not what they’re for.
The trouble starts when organizations think “their view of quality is the same as the market’s view of quality.;; As Peter Drucker said, ‘The customer rarely buys what the company thinks it sells him’.”
So be very wary if your organization “is planning to launch something without thinking about how the target customer measures quality.” Remember: “Quality is a relative term!”
- (Scott Anthony, "Is CVS Caremark out-innovating Apple?", Innovation Insights, Feb. 12, 2008.)
Related articles
- Service and policy - Service-related notes from library blogs.
- Face time or Facebook? - Jeff Scott considers the relative worth of technological solutions vs. face-to-face service.
- Who needs reference librarians? - Jamie LaRue discusses changes that make reference librarians more important--but only when they're more active in their roles.
