Providing quality service is the responsibility of the organization, and not a star employee, which is difficult to obtain, expensive and risky. You can do it in an easier, cheaper and safer way with a service system. I'll explain.
Providing quality service is the responsibility of the organization, and not of a star employee, who knows very well how to treat customers with his extraordinary abilities.
Getting star employees is difficult, retaining them is expensive, and basing quality of service on star employees is very risky. How to get it in an easier, cheaper and safer way?
A few days ago I complained about a very poor quality service, with serious breaches of the commitment. I managed, after much insistence, to be attended by the general manager, who told me:
"Here you have to cut heads", "That employee must be fired, because he has good technical knowledge, but does not know how to deal with customers."
But who is providing the service for me: an employee or an organization? The shortcomings were a clear deficiency of the service system, and not of the employee who attended me. You could tell there wasn't even a service system. Each one acted according to his own abilities and knowledge.
However, this manager was convinced that he should change the employee, with a naive hope that someone else would do better. The reality is that, unless you got a star employee, capable of providing quality service, with good customer service and good technical knowledge, that organization is not trained to ensure quality service. And the worst thing is that getting that person, as I just said, is difficult, expensive and risky.
Do you know if you have a service system? Or does your service depend on your employees?
How do you know if your organization is running this same risk? Here are some questions that can guide you to make your own diagnosis:
- Do your clients look for certain vendors or employees to be served? When there is a client or a difficult case, do you send it to your star employee? Does your shelf move every time an employee leaves? Is it very difficult for you And it takes you a long time to get a new employee to learn your job? Are new employees making too many mistakes in service?
If you have answered yes to most of these questions, it is a sign that you should work on your service system.
What is a service system?
A service system is a work structure that allows employees to provide consistent quality service, minimizing the variations of each person's moods, abilities and special knowledge.
These service systems are built on the experience that employees have accumulated throughout their work, and their own knowledge. So it does not mean that you are going to cancel your star employees, no! You are simply going to take advantage of them intelligently, to multiply their skills for the benefit of the organization.
A change of values is necessary
But, for this to happen, some commonly installed values must change. You must be thinking: star employees or crazy people would share what makes them unique! It's true, but…
This happens because employees are recognized and rewarded for their individual performance. If you shine for those unique qualities, you will never want to share them!
So what has to change?
We must begin to reward those who contribute to the service system. That is, those who share their knowledge and experiences based on everyone. More and more organizations are realizing this shift they must make, and thus they will also encourage star employees to be stars of collaboration and teamwork, because these are the new values that are best paid in organizations.
In your organization, who are best rewarded: those who shine for their individual results, or those who contribute to team learning?
