Chapter 18

 Enable Your Winners to Win

People make the difference in providing high-quality service. And motivated people are more likely to provide great service that positively impresses customers than people who aren’t.

Case in point. Airlines. All airlines have an identical fundamental product: delivering you safely to Airport B after taking off safely from Airport A. So, many of them have tried to create a competitive advantage in the service they provide. That theme is reflected in their calling card to the world, their familiar advertising slogans:

• The friendly skies.
• We love to fly.
• Ready when you are.
• Something special in the air.
• Wish you were here.

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 Tales from the Real World
Some years back, TWA emerged from some financial difficulties with its employees owning a substantial chunk of the airline’s stock. Its advertising boasted about the appreciative treatment you’d receive from the employee-owners (a claim also made by Avis, the rental car giant, and other companies where employees have a real stake in their employer’s prosperity).

 

Don recalls flying that newly invigorated TWA and experiencing a refreshing enthusiasm from the staff who were visibly happy about the renewal of their employer’s financial health. The employee’s new role as owners of their employer obviously gave their morale—and service levels—a boost from before when they were only “hired hands.”

 

The challenge, of course, is to create that kind of enthusiasm day-in and day-out year after year.

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No matter what industry you’re in, the quality of your customer service distinguishes your company one way or another. Which way depends on you.

Peak Performance

In the previous chapter, we talked about the importance of selecting people who are oriented to giving great service. Now let’s say you’ve hired well. You have the right people in jobs they’re well-suited for. They care about their work, and seem willing to work hard.

Here are some piercing questions for your consideration:

• Is each person on your staff performing at or very close to his personal best?
• Consistently?

To have your company performing at its peak capacity, you need every individual performing at peak capacity—at their personal best, not just doing enough to keep from getting fired.

Closing the Motivation Gap

Think of the issue this way. Conjure in your mind’s eye the ideal customer service employee. We’re talking perfection here. Let’s create a 10-point job performance scale with that ideal employee performing at the top—a perfect 10.

Next, estimate where each of your employees fall onto the scale—when giving the job their absolute best effort. Do you have a team of eights and nines? Great!

Now, assess where each of your service people’s work performance falls on the scale most of the time. Are you still looking at eights and nines? Or is it more like fives and sixes?

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 Watch It!
It’s unrealistic to expect people to work at their maximum capacity all day, every day. Yes, you can try to limit your employee’s periods of less-than-peak performance by creating conditions and an environment conducive to optimal performance. But even under the best circumstances, there will be times when people aren’t performing at their best, for whatever reason. As humans, we’re all subject to some degree of mood swings and are influenced by the rhythms of life that can affect our work performance. Some days, and some hours of the day, are going to be less than peak. So, be reasonable in your expectations. Create conditions where people are encouraged to deliver their best work, while neither expecting nor demanding perfection.

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The difference between your employees’ personal potential and their usual performance is what we call the Motivation Gap.

The Three Rs of Motivation

Your under-performing employees are, in a way, holding back. They’re not doing their best—most of the time—because . . . Because why?

There are a couple of basic reasons why employees deliver less than their potential to you. They believe:

• You don’t really expect their best.
• Their extra effort isn’t appreciated or rewarded—so they hold back.

Both these reasons stem from a choice the employee makes. Most of the time, that choice is made subconsciously. Few people say to themselves, “I think I’ll just do only a little bit more than enough to get by—not so much that I really fully invest myself in my work.” (Can you imagine anyone talking like that to themselves!)

So going “above and beyond” isn’t simply a matter of skill or even values, it’s a matter of choice.

Getting your employees to produce outstanding work has been treated by many business people and consultants as some kind of great eternal mystery. If anything is mysterious about it, it’s this fact: It’s really very simple. You can fully express the “secret” in three words beginning with the letter R.

Responsibility

To give someone responsibility for their work says to them, I trust you. It says, treat this work as a source of both pride and joy because you own it, and because you own it, you can freely invest yourself in it.

When people don’t own their work, they feel incidental to its progress—they’re nothing more than an anonymous cog in an impersonal corporate machine. When people own their work, it’s an important part of themselves—something they want to nurture, to make the best it can be.

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 At Your Service
Motivation is very personal and comes from deep inside. Each of us is motivated by different things—related to personal values, as we discussed in Chapter 17. Because motivation comes from within a person, a boss cannot motivate her employees. They motivate themselves. However, she can create situations and conditions where employees find themselves responding positively—with motivation for producing great work.

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Most people want to take responsibility for their work. As humans, we draw much of our personal identity from our work. A job well done is a source of pride. We say to ourselves, “I did that!” Taking full responsibility for our work heightens our sense of involvement and satisfaction in our work. It encourages us to do better work. Responsibility is a motivator.

Here are some ways to give people responsibility for their work:

• Tell them they’re responsible. Express your confidence in their competence, and your availability to support them.
• Trust them to do the work. Build their skills and competence to take an increasing share of responsibility for the work (work design, scheduling, team inspection, team correction, and so on). Trust is a high compliment and a superb motivator. You’ll never get exceptional, inspired work from employees who believe you don’t trust them.

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   At Your Service
  Customer service work can be emotionally draining. It’s constantly giving care and too often receiving abuse for circumstances over which the employee had no control and likely no involvement. Taking responsibility for continually rescuing the corporate reputation can be emotionally draining and physically exhausting. For your people to have the stamina to do that hour after hour, day after day, they need support and they need rest.

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• Specify quality expectations. Provide the necessary tools and support and tell people they’re accountable for meeting the standard. Allow them input into or give them responsibility for designing the system of work necessary to meet the quality standards.
• Make clear the negative and positive impact their actions will have on other employees and the company’s overall reputation in the eyes of the customer.
• Establish boundaries for ownership. How much money can the individual or team spend without an additional managerial approval? Can they set their own priorities? Determine their schedules? Can the team hire their own members? Fire one of their own under certain circumstances? Be clear about the limits of ownership so people can operate fully within the limits but not exceed them. As skills and competence increase, expand the boundaries.
• Let them autograph their work. In some hotels, housekeepers leave signed cards in guest rooms. (“This room was prepared for your comfort by Angela. I do hope you find your stay most pleasant. If you need additional towels or would like the room refreshed, please call Housekeeping at extension 456.”) In some packing and distribution centers, workers insert little slips of paper into their shipments (“Your order was inspected for completeness and personally packed for you by William T.”)

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   Watch It!
  If you tell employees that they have responsibility by telling them they’re empowered, explain what you mean by that. Empowerment is a fashionable word not found in some dictionaries. People may not be clear about what you mean when you use the word. Do you know, precisely, what you mean when you say you want to empower your employees? Clarify it for yourself. Clarify it for your employees. And don’t think you can fool employees by using the word empowerment as a motivational tool with no backbone to it. They will see through the fluff as fast as it takes to say the word empowerment.

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• When problems arise or quality slips, give the individual or team the task of correcting the situation. Express your interest and willingness to assist, but respect the boundaries of ownership. If you must assert greater involvement in the process, do so as a partner, not as a thief of the ownership you tried to establish.

When someone owns something, it is theirs. You can’t give your employees responsibility for their work while constantly looking over their shoulders, reserving all decision-making, and second-guessing them. That just delivers this double-whammy message: I don’t trust you, but I will hold you accountable.

That’s a lose-lose proposition that will do nothing to inspire great work.

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 Watch It!
You can overdo a good thing. Just as you wouldn’t take 20 aspirin when two are sufficient, don’t chase after your CSRs shouting “great work, great work!” all the time. Use positive, reinforcing comments when they’re deserved. A degree of rarity tends to increase the value of anything—even recognition for a job well done.

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Recognition

While everyone who works for a living expects a decent paycheck in return, we have yet to meet someone who didn’t appreciate a little appreciation as well. When you’ve done good work, don’t you feel proud of yourself? And no matter how self-motivated you are, isn’t the good feeling you get from doing good work amplified even more when someone else notices, too? (Gee, dear, thanks for cleaning the bathroom; it looks great!)

Ways to recognize good work:

• Post letters from satisfied customers, and from colleagues in other areas of the company who noticed and appreciated the good work done in customer service
• Immediately after observing or hearing a particularly strong interaction with a customer, let the customer service rep know you noticed and valued the strong performance. Point out what was done exceptionally well.

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   Watch It!
  We love to compete, but strongly caution you about using contests that pit employee against employee as motivators. The idea should not be to have a limited number of winners, but to have an increase in productivity by everyone. Use contests where people receive rewards for certain levels of productivity, not winner take all. It’s the cumulative increase in productivity that will give you the greatest increase in overall perceived customer satisfaction. Contests that pit employee against employee can have negative consequences.

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• Ask a top performer to present some of their winning ways to colleagues.
• Provide additional educational opportunities to your top performers. The best usually want to get better. Skill enhancement can be very rewarding.
• Discuss effective customer interactions in a newsletter, highlighting particular case studies. It doesn’t have to be fancy. We’d advise using paper (it’s physically tangible and commands attention, and can be highlighted and stored for future review) but in a pinch, e-mail is better than nothing.
• Send handwritten notes to recognize exemplary work. For greater impact, send them to the employee’s home.
• For truly extraordinary performance, consider public recognition. This could be at a staff meeting, or even a special event, a luncheon, or how about a special snack event in the break room in honor of your achiever. Plaques, certificates, gag gifts; all symbolize the achievement with a lasting, visible reminder to inspire similar behavior in the future.

While the ideas we mention here are great for recognizing employee successes, remember that what may motivate one person may not be perceived as motivating by somebody else. Try tailoring your recognition gestures to the person receiving the gesture. This will increase the desired effect.

Reward

Sure, your employees receive financial compensation for the work they do. And the company rightfully expects good work from employees for its investment in their salaries. But shouldn’t exceptional work be worth a bit more?

Compensation should be related to performance, or else it has no value beyond discouraging people from looking for another employer.

Here are some considerations for using compensation as a motivator:

• Tie financial rewards, such as a bonus, closely in time to the behavior that earned it.
• Modest rewards in the form of gift certificates, movie or play or concert tickets, can have much greater impact than their equivalent in cash.

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   Watch It!
  Be careful what you reward. Some rewards may yield the opposite results you’re looking for. Rewarding a CSR for reducing the amount of time he takes per call—without any accountability for results produced in those calls—can be devastating to your customers. If the employee is self-centered or feels great pressure to slam through the transactions, all he cares about is quickly getting the customer off the phone, with or without a viable solution.

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• Clearly identify the behavior that earned the reward (or, in the case of substandard performance, the behavior that didn’t).
• When performance is the result of a team effort, reward the team. Celebrations such as pizza party lunches, or catered breakfasts, or mid-afternoon ice cream sundae socials for meeting team goals are a nice way to say thank you to a group, and help foster interactions between colleagues.
• When tying compensation to results rather than behaviors, keep the link to results that the individual had control of, or at least influence, over. (An individual CSR exerts negligible influence on a company’s stock price.)

Enabling Through Education

Question: What do you do to help good people turn into great performers?

Answer: Everything you can.

Want better skilled employees? Educate them.

Both of us despise the word “train” when it comes to teaching skills. You can train animals, but you educate people. Animals are trained to carry out specific, limited acts. People apply what they have learned to their jobs, and continue learning, developing, and growing from their experiences. Service isn’t an act. It’s a response, both pro-active and re-active to the needs and desires of your customers. So we use the word educate in place of the word train.

Even if you lack internal staff to do extensive employee education, there are a wealth of alternatives.

• Community colleges. Many offer contract instruction right at your company in a wide variety of skill areas. The instructors are often highly capable business people from the community.

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   At Your Service
  Everyone learns in different ways. Most people learn a new skill best by getting a chance to practice that skill. That’s why on-the-job training is both very popular and extremely effective. For teaching conceptual material, we favor the method that inspiring teachers have used for millennia: the example. We have seen far too many corporate training programs with students sitting passively listening to an instructor go on and on with so much seemingly abstract blah, blah, blah. As people who give many, many presentations, we know that there’s a valid and important role for classroom-style instruction. But it must be engaging, relevant, and directly involve the participants in the learning.

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• Contract instructors. Many highly skilled people have jumped on the outsource bandwagon, freelancing their employee development skills, hiring out their instruction or facilitation skills for a half-day, a full-day, or on an on-going contract basis.
• Performance improvement companies. These consulting and instructional companies provide on-site expertise or certify your employees to become facilitators. Often these companies customize their programs to meet a company’s specific needs and offer a variety of instructional methods and media.
• Public seminar companies. For a modest investment, you can send employees to learn basic business skills such as interpersonal communication, project management, and team-building at a public seminar. Usually held for a day in a hotel meeting room, the public seminars feature competent instruction, take home materials, and the opportunity to purchase additional resource materials.
• Mentor/Mentee programs. An incredible wealth of knowledge and experience already resides on your payroll . . . in the minds of your veterans. Have them take part in the training process by mentoring newcomers.

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 Tales from the Real World
Marriott Hotels assures continual skill development by its employees through a commitment to on-going education. Not only does Marriott offer tuition reimbursement programs, it puts its philosophy of improving service to customers into action at its hotel properties every day. Each shift, every day, begins with 15-minutes of skill enhancement instruction for employees.

 

Improving customer satisfaction doesn’t happen by accident. Continuously improving operations require continuously improving human resources.

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Several studies have shown that money spent on the majority of all training interventions was wasted. The reason is that the emphasis was on the training event itself and not on the daily implementation of the information covered in the training. Psychologists tell us that it takes upwards of 28 days of practice to develop a new habit. Education is about developing new habits. If you’re going to involve your employees in educational programs, be prepared to have a plan of implementation after the program is over. Otherwise, save your money.

Multi-Function Experience

Some would call this cross-training. We don’t for two reasons. First, we dislike the term training. Second, we know that for someone to develop competency in a job, they need to do it, not just learn about it, observe it, or try it once. Having a team of players ready to move into a variety of positions means having a group of people with experience in multiple jobs.

That multiple job experience could be as simple as being the driver of the garbage truck one day, and a garbage handler the next, and a truck washer the day after that. Marriott Hotels combined the positions of bell hop, front desk clerk, and doorman into a Guest Services Agent. So now, everyone staffing the front lobby area does what needs to be done, when it needs doing. Guests are served faster, better, and by people who know that serving guests is their job, not performing a small, specialized set of tasks.

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 At Your Service
The greatest reward on the job is doing great work. When you’ve hired right, you’ve got people who want to do more than the minimum, who aren’t happy just getting by. Encourage them by enabling them. Provide the tools, systems, policies, and managerial support to make doing great work as effortless as possible.

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Companies who use this multi-functional method swear by it, and here are some reasons why they do:

• Greater flexibility in scheduling
• More available competent help in critical areas during peak demand periods
• Greater employee morale (more job variety, more knowledge and skills)
• Greater employee retention
• Happier, more satisfied customers
• Insurance against the unthinkable—leaving your customers with no one to service their needs
• Avoiding being held hostage by a certain employee with special skills or knowledge

The Terminator

Okay, so you have listened to all the great advice we’ve given you. In fact, you even tried it all. And for whatever reason, nothing seems to work with a certain employee who isn’t responding. What do you do?

Have you ever trimmed a tree of dead or out-of-balance branches? Did you notice how that can make a tree healthier and stronger? Well, sometimes you make an organization stronger by weeding the corporate garden. John F. Welch, CEO of General Electric, says you can’t be an A+ organization with grade C people. You have to cut your losses.

For evaluating employee performance, here’s the essence of a four-quadrant scheme that has been used successfully by many organizations.

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 At Your Service
If you have employees who routinely don’t serve customers with joy, and who refuse to keep up on their technical knowledge, send them on their way. Either to a position that better suits them, or else fire them. Your customers aren’t forgiving. You can’t be either. Don’t carry deadwood. You may bring down an otherwise healthy organization. Prune to prosper.

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Of course, your job is to keep employees from reaching Quadrant Four. By the time someone lands here, you’ve wasted the money invested in an employee who didn’t work out and will need to spend additional money on finding, hiring, and educating a replacement.

As uncomfortable and painful as it is to fire people, occasionally you might have to terminate an employee for the sake of the rest of the organization.

While we don’t recommend termination as the best solution to employee performance deficiencies—they may need better information, skill development, or managerial support—sometimes it’s the only real solution. You must be prepared to take this decisive action in order to do your job—to serve your customers—appropriately. The good news is that most of the time termination is avoidable by hiring right and providing the proper environment for people to excel in.

Remember, hire smart; manage tough.