Sometimes You Have To Be Tough

A retailer recently sought my help because he had an employee who regularly irritated two or three customers a day. "Otherwise she is very good at her job," he told me, "but there is something about her attitude and manner that really gets up customers' noses. I'm getting tired of dealing with the almost daily complaints about her behaviour."

We reviewed the process that leads to getting staff to do the right things:

-       Does she understand the importance of providing a great customer experience?

-       Does she know how she needs to behave to create that experience?

-       Has she been told customers are complaining about her?

-       Does she understand what she is doing that causes these complaints?

-       Does she know this is a serious problem because it discourages customers from coming back and encourages them to tell others about their bad experience?

-       Does she acknowledge she needs to change her behaviour?

-       Has she agreed to change?

-       Have you provided her with coaching to help her change?

The answer to all of these questions was a resounding, yes. I asked if there was any evidence she had tried to change and the answer to that question was, no. "In that case," I told him, " You will have to start the process of dismissing her. She is too big a risk to your business to keep her around."

The retailer was shocked.  From the look on his face you would have thought I had suggested he sold his children into slavery. "We don't fire people," he said indignantly. "We are not that kind of company."  I asked if they were the kind of company who looked after their customers. "Of course we are," he replied.  I told him that in this case he couldn't be both. By choosing not to take a hard line with his employee, he was choosing to expose his customers to the very high risk they would have a bad customer experience.

I have long believed the recipe for the effective management of people is to be 50% supportive and 50% demanding. Clearly, if we are too demanding and insufficiently supportive we will create a culture of fear. That will lower morale and kill any desire to look after the customer, especially if that means doing something extra, spending money or bending a rule. On the other hand, if we are too supportive and not demanding enough, people do not give their best. They cruise and take the easy way out and it is often the customer who suffers. 

I think in New Zealand and Australia we often fall into the trap of being too supportive and not demanding enough. I see a lot of mystery shopping results and I see stores that constantly fall well below the company’s standard in spite of management’s repeated efforts to help them improve. My question to the senior managers of these companies is, ‘Why do you allow this situation to continue?’

Like my friend the retailer, we seem to be reluctant to get tough with staff and consequently fail to protect our customers from bad experiences. Sure, lots of us give an errant employee a dressing down when they do something wrong but we don’t take the action we need to take by removing the person from our customer’s world and fixing the problem once and for all. This failure to follow up the warning with concrete action just teaches the staff member they can ignore your warnings and continue to behave as they always have done.

By saying all this I have probably ignited the debate about whether you should put your staff or your customers first, and many of you will believe you should look after your staff first. But I see no conflict between the two. A customer is anyone using a product or service we produce. Since the products and services of managers are things like policies, resources, instructions and advice, the customers of managers are their staff. As we have discussed many times, one of the keys to business success is to aim to make your customers successful. So, as managers we should aim to make our staff successful. But successful at what? Successful at creating a great experience for their customers. That is why we need to be both supportive and demanding. But just as there are a few paying customers you might choose not to do business with because they are poor payers, dishonest or abusive, there are staff you should choose not to keep because they do not respond to your efforts to help them succeed in looking after your customers.

Here is another reason to deal firmly with staff who continue to create bad experiences for your customers. If you do not engage your staff, they will not look after your customers. Staff who are now engaged will quickly become disengaged if they see you allow one of their colleagues to behave in a way that is contrary to how you have been telling people they should behave. You will quickly lose credibility and respect.

This may sound harsh but you have a responsibility to your customers to remove all obstacles to them having a great experience when they do business with you. After all, they produce 100% of your profits. Obviously there is a process that needs to be followed to help staff improve their performance and, if necessary, to dismiss them. Dismissal should clearly be the last resort. But occasionally, it is an action that needs to be taken. You owe it to both your customers and the rest of your staff to be tough when the need arises.