As soon as improved customer-care became popular, companies tried to manage its effects in a methodical and organised manner, which often simply resulted in putting in a new CRM (customer relationship management) system at best and a prolific amount of rhetoric at worst.
Defining the right motto has become paramount and mission statements such as ‘the customer is king’ and ‘the customer is always right’ were supposed to be our defining mantras, but apart from the fact no-one seems to actually understand what they mean, every individual knows from personal experience that it’s not true.
Each and every person in any company has a direct experience of being a customer every day of their life and they know that the massive advertising and customer care training that goes on must be happening somewhere else because they are certainly not feeling the benefits.
All the strategies used to improve customer relations is not really helping them to deal with the services they have to use every day because they are part of society.
They know that when they approach a hotel receptionist who has been trained to smile and be polite, they are going to make the smile drop as soon as they ask for another room 'without a concord engine for an air conditioning unit'. They know that core customer service values not ‘the truth’ when the person behind the bank counter never looks at them or when they have to make a dozen telephone calls just to find someone who is willing to get something done within their utilities supplier.
So, when an initiative like ‘Inspiring Service’ comes down line to the workforce, they know it’s probably hype on some level. When they are told to ‘show the customers we care’ they know it’s not quite it because it’s actually about doing it; about caring, not about showing that they do.
Which is why people directly and personally experience that any service improvement tends to be missing the vital ingredient that they can relate to, embody and contribute; authenticity
What is inspiring service?
If you have read the above, you will understand how hard it is to create a conceptual frame-work for a qualitative experience like ‘inspiring service’ but we only have words here, so the ideas should be examined from a personal experience and perspective, in order to have value.
The dictionary defines ‘Inspiring’ as: "to effect, to guide, to stimulate to action, to breathe life into…"
Unfortunately, the closest we have probably got to this definition is along the lines of ‘giving the customers a ‘wow’ experience’ which, again, keeps missing the point as it’s not about ‘giving an experience’ to anyone, it’s simply about relating as one human being to another.
The ability to inspire does not come from telling people what to do or from forcing them through the company’s procedures, bureaucracy and machinery; treating them like they are ‘punters’ rather than customers and it certainly does not come from the imposition of so-called corporate values on the workforce.
Inspiration is a personal gift that an individual brings from simply being ‘who they are’ and if the management do not have an innate belief in the generally positive intentions of their people, they can never draw these qualities out or have them expressed through an inspiring service nor ‘raise’ the culture as a whole.
As most of these ideas are ‘truisms’ that we all experience every day of our lives, the real question is then; “why don’t more companies have a thriving culture and a service which ‘stimulates and breathes life into’ their customers?”
A parallel might be drawn from looking at the difference between ‘morals’ and ‘natural integrity’ in life generally. We were all brought up to observe certain protocols and behaviour based on moral principles that our parents and teachers gave us a guide to relating and to being in society, all of which is undoubtedly commendable.
The problem is that, whilst these morals may exactly reflect our own sense of what is right and wrong, the imposition of them means that a child can find it difficult to access what matters to them personally and to connect with their own principles, in an authentic way. Worst still, it can even create the notion that deep down the child is a bad person, a criminal or is potentially destructive without enforced imposition to their behaviour and pressures of conformity.
The same issue applies to business; a workforce consists of people and people consist of individuals, each of whom can be governed to express the highest or the lowest in their job and in creating the collective culture.
Human nature, despite the abundance of evidence to the contrary, is fundamentally based on the desire to make a contribution and to exercise personal integrity in our involvement with others.
This natural ‘ground of being’ is the true source of inspiring service. If managers can draw this aspect up into the corporate culture, their customer services will automatically be inspiring and will still deliver all of the hard commercial benefits as a result, in fact more so.
What part does management play?
At the end of the day, the collective culture is ultimately determined by the managers, even though it is created or sourced by the whole company.
It is well known that a workforce will pick up on the bad habits of management about a thousand times more than they will pick up on the good ones. If the managers are innately cynical or confuse ‘directing’ with ‘controlling’ they will somehow convey their outlook, despite the corporate mission statements hanging in reception.
Inspiring service is created as an outcome of people being ‘who they truly are’ in their job and they must experience that their contribution is a gift which is freely given. If staff believe that their wages are a reflection of their value and innate meaning, they will feel unrecognised and undervalued. If they believe that they are paid to do a job and what they bring is priceless and freely given by choice, they will flourish and so inevitably will the customers’ experience.
There is one vital ingredient that, whilst never removing the human fear of failure and exposure, management can use to create a larger context or meaning that gives people the opportunity to ‘stimulate to action’ and ‘breathe life into’ their job and business relationships.
This aspect is ‘trust’
By trust, it is not about dropping management responsibility or abrogating leadership, it’s about giving people the sense that they are innately trusted to do the best and at least to do what works, because of their own values and personal integrity and because it matters to them.
It is not about managing by fear (of getting it wrong) nor is it a recipe to end all mistakes and problems that occur in business life, it is about giving people the opportunity to correct their mistakes and experience ‘ownership’ of the whole culture.
If a company can release this underlying drive and desire to contribute, which is sitting within the culture right now, they will have a truly responsive workforce and therefore a truly market-responsive organisation with inspired, satisfied customers.
The ‘soft’ art of this falls within the realm of management who must embody and develop these principles in their own dealings and also requires an adherence to authenticity at their level, in order for it to work or ‘cascade down’ the whole business.
The ‘hard’ skills that it entails also falls to management and can actually be quite simply and effectively achieved within a context of inspiration and trust.
To achieve this, all managers need to do is to allow their people to ‘make a call’ or a personal decision when dealing with their customers.
Again, we may have lost some of the power of this idea as soon as the notion of ‘empowerment’ became the new jargon, but it is still singularly the most critical aspect of all in building and growing a business and in developing an inspiring culture.
When people do customer service initiatives they nearly always miss this aspect, the source of genuine inspiration, by imposing procedural ground rules, scripts and most of all by robbing their people of the ability to take responsibility for their customers.
Then they are surprised when they hear their people saying things like “Sorry, it’s not my department” or “No, you can’t speak to the engineers, you have to go through us as customer service -, but we can’t get them to do anything about it as they are very busy at the moment”
What does it take?
There are immense practical reasons why these problems happen and it is not suggested that empowering people can compensate for inadequate procedures, systems and market issues. Nor is it about giving freedom and possibility to people at the level of policies or critical goals. It is about giving them freedom and possibility within the job and within the relationships they deal with every day.
Up to 90% of communication is actually non-content, it is never about what is said, it is always about the experience of the people who are in dialogue and the impact they have on each other, which is often the complete opposite to their underlying intention and desires.
The simple fact is that managers have to ‘stimulate’ and ‘breathe life into’ their people and create an inspiring culture if there is to be any change whatsoever in how customers are treated and in the authentic impact of the service delivered.
If we treat people like liabilities who must be managed for damage limitation or be over-controlled to at least insure the lowest common denominator is reasonably alright, we can never expect people to feel trusted to do what works or be recognised for their unique and individual ability to express inspiring service.
Of course, in order to manage the transition from one culture to another, managers must ensure that their people also have access to the practical tools and support they need in order to know how to do ‘it’ themselves. Even the most intangible strategies have to be put into form and methodologies at some point and this is when a company can issue instructions to the ‘corporate-body’ because the ‘corporate-heart’ is healthy and able to listen and respond authentically.