Empower your people...

We draft job descriptions and develop job training programs as if that’s exactly what we expect our employees to do. Realistically, those only outline the basic guidelines of the job and should be used to (1) familiarize applicants with what the job entails, and (2) provide new hires with the outline of what they need to learn. Effective managers then use those to develop role plays to help their new employees practice to gain competence and confidence. After than, the best companies turn their employees loose to find ways to inject their personalities into the job, so it feels natural and personable. Managers should then challenge these employees to find if they can do it better; if they can, encourage them to do better. Continually. You should then consider regularly holding meetings with all employees to show them how the position is evolving so that they too adopt these new best practices. But here’s where I think it gets tricky:   those job descriptions should continually be updated with those improved policies and practices so that subsequent new hires start there. And then they too will face that same challenge at the conclusion of their training. It’s a formal ongoing process that takes full advantage of each new employee’s fresh set of eyes, excitement, and ingenuity. Make sure every new hire gets the benefit of training, learning, and growing into their new positions today. 

 

Robert Louis Fosse (1927 – 1987): American choreographer, dancer, filmmaker, and stage director. Known for his work on stage and screen, he is arguably the most influential figure in the field of jazz dance in the twentieth century.

A little preparation goes a long way...

Leaders often preach the importance of thinking before you act. When serving guests, that means listening and determining the situational needs before acting. That prevents doing something that was unwanted or unnecessary. But there are other times when employees must act quickly on emergency situations for which they’ve been trained – like in a fire or electrical outage. When a fire alarm goes off, employees must be trained to go to assigned posts, to recite practiced scripts, and provide aid getting everyone to a safe location. Or if a guest is choking and a Heimlich procedure is needed. Or the lights go out and guest checkout must be handled manually. These, and many other kinds of situations occur in every business, making it imperative for management to create a list of emergency situations, define exactly what the policies and practices are related to that type of event, train all employees how to react, and have regular refresher classes. That way, at certain crucial moments, like an emergency or an unplanned opportunity to serve, employees can act first and think later. Be sure to craft that list carefully and explain it fully so that employees know when to act first. Don’t think these kinds of things can’t happen to you – it’s better to be prepared for the unexpected today.

 

Edmund Valentine White III (1940 –2025): American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer, and essayist.

Stop, Look, and Listen...

The service business is rough – we expect employees to put the most into and get the most out of every customer interaction. It’s not what you do, but how you do it that counts. Think about the best interactions you’ve had with a food server, bartender, retail salesperson, or call center agent in the past year. The best ones stick in your mind because they are attentive, always smiling, make lots of eye contact, look like they’re having fun, and leave you feeling good. The worst ones are obviously just going thru the motions – they don’t want to be there and the look on their face and the body language they use are loudly shouting that message. It’s like this: it takes the same amount of time and energy to do something right or wrong, meaning if you don’t do it right it’s because you don’t want to. Ok – there may be times when someone’s not into it – maybe they’re sick or distracted by personal issues: that’s what paid time off is for. Because, if you can’t do it with feeling – don’t.  Make that the standard and let your employees know that those are the expectations of the job.  Then it’s up to each employee to have the integrity to reliably live up to the standard of doing it with feeling today.

 

Patsy Cline (born Virginia Patterson Hensley; 1932 – 1963) was an American singer. One of the most influential vocalists of the 20th century, she was one of the first country music artists to successfully cross over into pop music.

Bad service can ruin someone's day...

I am still upset and angry – bad customer service can do that to you. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon to hear about historically great brands cutting service practices and expenses in search of positive quarter over quarter financial results. Putting pressure on employees and diminishing customer experiences. Long term, loyal customers want to stay that way – don’t embarrass them or yourselves by making employees do what they clearly know could create a service problem. If you want to change practices or cut expenses, ask your front-line employees how to do that. The best leaders listen to their people and their customers before making changes to products and services. In the end, good customer service costs less than bad customer service – doing anything that could potentially lose a customer can become a slippery slope. Stay engaged with your employees and customers to make certain you provide the best possible customer service today.

 

Sally Gronow, Customer Manager at Welsh Water

I'm sorry...

I didn’t write or post a message yesterday – it’s only the 2^nd time in all these years that’s happened. I was travelling and a poorly handled situation caused my trip to take 12 hours longer than expected – time when I would normally be writing and posting. It happened on Southwest, an airline I fly enough to have earned 1,000,000 reward miles – you might assume from that I’m a fan of their unique customer service practices and style. But yesterday they failed (for the first time in my experience) to make the effort to make a bad situation acceptable. I know from my years in the gaming business that in the service sector it’s hard to make a “no” into what’s perceived as an acceptabe situation. They used to be able to do that, but yesterday they didn’t. Empathy and a smile work better than wagging your finger – figuratively and literally. I was stunned initially, but today I’m disappointed. Because something that’s been so unique for so long, and what’s turned great customer experiences into extreme loyalty, may be changing. For the worse. For the bottom line. There are too many examples where something like that turns into a slippery slope for an industry-leading company. Without making the effort to create win-win customer experiences in the best and worst of service efforts, your team’s skills are nothing more than what you could have done but didn’t. Put in the necessary time and effort to make things right today.

 

Angela Lee Duckworth (born 1970): American academic, psychologist, and popular science author.[1]

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[1] She is the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studies grit and self-control. She is the founder and former CEO of Character Lab, a not-for-profit whose mission is to advance the science and practice of character development.

 

Use training to build competence and confidence...

When researching best practices for opening The Mirage, most every company we researched stressed the importance of training employees. About how to do their new jobs, the company history and culture, and meeting guest expectations. Especially in an opening where there aren’t others to learn from. That part of the opening plan was projected to cost an extra $10M, or approximately $2000 per employee. At less than 2% of the overall cost of that project, that sounded reasonable. But it was still $10M that hadn’t been originally budgeted, so we were nervous taking the proposal to the board. Until one of the directors asked what we thought the cost and impact would be if we didn’t spend the money. They knew intuitively that the competence and confidence of the staff was going to be the difference between success and failure. Like most leaders, they were naturally cost conscious and demanded that we outline clear objectives, plan and budget carefully, and create a method for measuring the return on that investment. The metrics we chose were guest satisfaction and staff retention – both exceeded our wildest expectations. Businesses big and small are complex and face stiff competition. The best hedge against both of those is a well-trained and motivated staff. That’s where you’ll want to spend your money today. 

 

Derek Curtis Bok (born 1930): American lawyer and educator, and former president of Harvard University.

Don't shy away from a good challenge...

I’m fairly conservative, normally averse to risk. But that contrasts with the crazy, far-fetched ideas I came up with and developed during my career. Most were out of necessity because of (1) the unbelievable volume of activities related to recruiting, onboarding, and training during pre-opening and (2) managing large employee headcounts post opening, both of which forced us to look for new efficiencies of process and practice. Fortunately for me, computer technology was advancing at the same time as I was identifying these challenges. We came up with lots of ideas – some were ahead of the development curve, but others helped spur some exciting leading-edge stuff. We were a laboratory for Infor, Vurve, and PeopleSoft development; with all three, the timing was right, and the results were game changers:

·  With Infor (at the time they were Infinium), we collaborated in the development of business intelligence tools for HR and pioneered paperless HR forms that anchored nascent self-service applications.

·    With Vurve (at the time it was Recruitmax), we were the first to leverage technology to collect, process, and track employment applications for every position

·   With the help of PeopleSoft developers, we created the first completely paperless HR environment (processing, retrieving, and storing data from applicant, employee, and manager self-service applications).

Of course, we tried lots of other ideas which, when moved forward like chessmen, were beaten because they weren’t feasible or practical. But that never stopped us from continuing to push forward successfully with others that ultimately worked out. I suspect everyone is faced with issues of necessity – big and small; when that happens, don’t shy away from trying to find new and effective ways to deal with them today.

 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832): German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language.[1]

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[1] His work has had a wide-ranging influence on literary, political, and philosophical thought in the Western world from the late 18th century to the present. A poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre-director, and critic, his works include plays, poetry and aesthetic criticism, as well as treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour.