It is often believed that monopolies and public services are protected by lack of competition and need not be concerned with customer satisfaction. Overall, customers have no choice but to return, since they have no other alternative.
However, poor service also has its consequences in these cases, and the costs paid by these organizations, often hidden from their eyes, are very high. I am going to reveal to you in this article what those costs are and how they affect the organization.
In the book “Making TQM work”, the authors quote the following paragraph from Communication Publications:
“The average American company will lose 10 to 30 percent of its customers this year, mainly due to poor service. When customers have a choice, they will go to the competition almost a third of the time. If your clients have no other choice - as in the case of public services or government agencies - they will use their feet for something else. They will kick you. Customer dissatisfaction will erupt in hostility directed at your employees and your organization. The psycho-emotional effect on your employees will translate into increased absenteeism, turnover, stress-related illnesses and additional costs, such as exhausted workers who have to be retained or replaced. "
It really is a high cost, don't you think? I have verified many times how bad service affects employees directly. Once an employee of a company told me that clients said to him: “you were excellent”, and the pain that this caused them.
Employees, especially those in contact with the public, are directly affected by customer dissatisfaction. Because customers, although many times they are aware that the bad service cannot be attributed completely to that employee in front of them, they need to unload with someone, they need to express their disagreement, and there they have who, at that moment, represents the company.
And tell me, who likes to be told that he does things wrong, that he is a disaster, that he is useless (and other irreproducible things that customers say when they are angry)?
The company will feel the effects on the work environment and the consequences mentioned in the aforementioned paragraph. And this has a cost. And a cost that, sometimes, is very high. In addition, a vicious circle is generated that makes things worse and worse, because an employee who is unmotivated, or overworked due to absenteeism, or sick, what kind of service can he provide?
So, I want to invite you to become aware of these situations in your organization. Whether it is a monopoly or not, you must be aware that poor service has a negative impact on the inside of your work team.
How to reverse it then? Here are some ideas:
1. First take advantage of the contact with the customer that your employees have, and ask them to transmit what they receive from them. This has a double effect:
- The first is very valuable information to improve the service. Sometimes not so many surveys are needed, but only to take advantage of this information that they have first hand. The second effect is to release the accumulated tension. That they can do catharsis and decompress. But for this to happen, your intention and your message must be clear: you are not asking them this to blame them for their bad work, but to see how the entire organization can improve from this information. Let them see that they are valuable for having this experience, and sharing it can help everyone. They are only the tip of an iceberg that is the whole organization, and if the service is not good, the responsibility is in the whole system, not in them.
2. Then, work to install systems to improve service. Remember that a better service will improve the work environment, and in this way you will break the vicious circle I told you about before.
