Do you ever have ‘Eureka!’ moments? Those experiences when something that’s been on your mind and perhaps troubling you for some time suddenly becomes clear and the answer or solution is obvious. I have them regularly. Unfortunately for me they usually occur in the early hours of the morning. Sometimes I am woken up at a ridiculous hour with a brainstorm of an idea that I then realise is the answer to something I’ve been thinking about for ages. And often the answer I get is something that been in front of me all the time, but I just didn’t see it. I guess that’s why Tom Peters calls them ‘blinding flashes of the obvious’. I had one the other day. I was in Cannes, working with a team of managers from one of my customers. At 3.30 a.m. I woke up and then had to spend an hour or so writing down the things in my head before I could get back off to sleep again.
What burst into my brain was an answer to something that I had been thinking about and puzzling over for ages. I’m regularly asked “If we decide to make service the (or one of the) thing(s) that differentiates us from our competitors, and helps us to create sustainable competitive advantage, is there ONE THING that we should focus on above all others?” Up until that morning my answers were never what people wanted. I admit to using ‘consultant speak’ and waffling on with answers like “it all depends upon your current position” or “it’s different for every organisation”. But I guess what I was really saying, but wasn’t prepared to admit, was that I didn’t have the answer they wanted.
But now I have! I am absolutely clear what the focus should be. I am convinced that for almost every business nothing else will make more of a difference. It’s something that if you have or do it, everything else will be quick and/or easy to do. But if you don’t they will become hard or impossible. The good news is that it’s easy to understand. And when I tell people about it they always agree that it must be the key thing. But the bad news is that it’s not easy to do. In fact it’s really hard. So although everyone agrees, very few of them actually do what they should do about it. So it remains the domain of just a few, rare organisations. I guess this must be the reason, or at least one of them, that so few organisations earn the reputation of being ‘famous for service’.
And what is it? It is populating your organisation with people who have a ‘flair’ for service, people that don’t need to be taught or shown how to be good at service because they do it naturally, and people that would feel uncomfortable working in an organisation that did it any other way. On the front line you should have 100% of these people. As you go deeper into the organisation the percentage can reduce, but I think you still need to keep the percentage high if you want everyone to work together with the right focus.
So, now you know why it’s easy to understand, but hard to do. It’s easy to understand because it’s obviously right. It’s hard to do because it means only recruiting people that have this natural ability, and never taking whoever you can get because you must have someone, or anyone, or at least the best of a bad bunch. It also means finding practical, ethical (it wasn’t their fault you hired them) ways to deal with the wrong people that have been hired in the past.
Changing all this usually causes some unsettlement and turmoil for a period. But my experience is it’s really worth going through it because the difference it makes is astounding. For example it makes the implementation of any new programmes or initiatives to improve customer service go with ease. It even makes the not so well thought out ones work well too. It also enables managers to concentrate their efforts in the right places, on the people that are doing a great job, instead of in the wrong places, on those that aren’t (which is where they often spend most of time if you’ve hired the wrong people). And above all, it makes being at work a pleasure, with everyone helping each other and doing their best to deliver great service.
So if you’re serious about service, get to it! If you do you’ll discover what a remarkable difference it can make. You also be one of the few that have done it, so you’ll automatically be different to almost all your competitors. You’ll have advantages over them they will not understand and will find almost impossible to copy. And you’ll enjoy coming to work more than you’ve ever done before.
So what are you waiting for?
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