Procedures, processes, workflows. They’re an important part of designing how your business operates, from how customers make purchases, to how your support staff handles problems. At The Brandt Group, we often advocate for something like our GUEST model, which stands for Greet-Understand-Explain-Secure-Thank; this model describes a process for making sure each customer is made to feel welcome, understood, and appreciated. This is smart.
Extreme Example
Now and again, however, your employees will interact with a customer whose needs defy the neat step-by-step procedure that you’ve designed. An extreme example of this is a situation that Shep Hyken described in a recent post: a friend of his had severe abdominal pains, so he went to an emergency room. Given his distress and the foreboding sense that he was going to die, he requested immediate medical care. However, the receptionist politely explained, “I’m sorry you’re not feeling well. There are two people in front of you, and you’ll have to wait your turn to register. If you sign in with your name, I’ll call you when we’re ready to get your information.” Only after begging for a couple more minutes was he given priority. It turns out he had a burst appendix and was very fortunate that he went into surgery when he did.
But let’s not be too harsh on the receptionist for being out-of-touch. Hyken explains, “Managing the reception and registration process in a hospital is tricky. People come in with pains and sicknesses that, while uncomfortable, aren’t life-threatening. Then there are more severe issues, such as a heart attack. The people on the front line assess the situation and determine if the patient goes straight back to see a doctor or gets sent to the reception area to wait their turn.” On the one hand, the receptionist was polite and even attempted to empathize. But she was also trying to follow a carefully laid out workflow for registering patients, and her devotion to those procedures nearly blinded her to a real emergency.
That’s the rub: no matter how careful we are in designing our sales and service processes, there are going to be situations that require us to side-step them to get the job done correctly. At least the stakes are rarely life-and-death in our own businesses!
Empowerment
One of the reasons that some employees are hesitant to go off-road, as it were, is that while they are well trained in how to do their jobs, they are not given the power to make exceptions. These employees fear that if they make an executive decision to cut through the red tape of a process, they may be punished.
What business planners have to accept is that not every situation is going to fit neatly within their models. Yes, the procedures in a business have been carefully chosen, but people are more important than planning. Remember, we should always strive to offer a superior customer experience and not a superior adherence to a script.
Consider an analogy about a tram and a car: a tram is a lot like a restrictive procedure. The tram can only follow a line and cannot deviate. Compare this to a car, which has its own procedure, including roads and traffic lights. But when push comes to shove, the driver can take the car off its route and detour around a jam.
A tram operator has few options. A driver has many. How do you see your employees?
Exceptions
You can empower your employees by making sure they understand that the customer experience matters more than any individual step in a sales or service workflow. Of course, you want to impress upon them that the workflow is there for a reason, and deviation should be an exception rather than a common practice. But employees should be encouraged to use common sense. If you’re worried they don’t have any common sense, then you better teach it to them, right?!
Can you think of examples within your own business that might necessitate exceptions? If you operate a restaurant, for example, perhaps you don’t permit diners to bring any outside food or drink with them. Or perhaps you run a retail business, and you have a 14-day restriction on returns. Are there scenarios where exceptions can be made for extenuating circumstances?
—Perhaps the diner is joining another patron at your restaurant for lunch, but he has strict dietary requirements due to his religious beliefs and doesn’t want to impose on you. —Or perhaps the retail customer was unable to reach your business to make a return because she was visiting a sick relative during the return window.
There are a lot of potential considerations out there, and you can’t anticipate every possible situation. Instead, both managers and employees alike should be able to do their jobs intelligently and compassionately, not just programmatically.
The Brandt Group offers mystery shopping services to help you hone your customer service and sales procedures, as well as test your employees to see how they handle exceptions. Combined with our leadership training courses, you can empower your employees be faithful to the company’s procedures, as well as flexible enough to adapt as necessary. Curious? Reach out and let’s work on prioritizing people over processes today!
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