Customer service reigns supreme, as we all know. It’s the core tenant of offering a great customer experience—the combination of all the interactions your customers have with your company. As such, it plays a crucial role in defining your brand’s overall perception. When we experience subpar customer service, our first inclination might be to blame the individual employee. However, if we take the time to really consider the matter, we begin to realize that this is not entirely true; instead, it’s frequently a consequence of managerial shortcomings. Let’s take a moment to explore how poor training, a lack of support, and a failure to address problems with employee attitude all point back to the manager and his or her responsibility to ensure your business offers a top-notch customer experience.
Training and Development
Effective training and development are the backbone of quality customer service. Employees can’t succeed without the right skills, knowledge, and tools to serve your customers efficiently and courteously. When your training regimens and developmental programs fall short, the manager should bear the brunt of the blame. These kinds of inadequacies reflect on poor planning and oversight at the leadership level. Employees can only perform their best when given the opportunity to learn and grow, and it is incumbent upon the manager to facilitate this.
Support and Resources
Even a well-trained employee will struggle when given insufficient support and resources. Managers are responsible for ensuring their team has access to the tools, information, and guidance necessary to handle customer inquiries and problems effectively. When employees are left to fend for themselves due to a lack of support (which can include understaffing), the manager is failing in his or her role as a leader. Managers must continuously evaluate and improve the support systems in place to guarantee that their team is in the best position possible to offer a great experience.
Attitude Problems
Sometimes, despite excellent training and great support, an employee may develop a negative attitude that ends up affecting his or her work. These may derive from interpersonal conflicts at work or be solely spillover from their personal lives. Either way, the manager must step in promptly; otherwise, a bad attitude will persist and affect the employee’s interactions with customers and other employees alike. A bad apple spoils the bunch, so a failure to address an issue like this may demoralize the whole team. Allowing a problem like this to persist unaddressed is unacceptable.
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We have to shift our view on who’s at fault for bad customer service. While individual employees certainly play a role in the overall customer experience, the responsibility for maintaining that experience falls upon the shoulders of your company’s leadership. Don’t let inadequate training, a lack of support, or a failure to address attitude problems undermine all your hard work. To ensure a high-level customer experience, you company must invest in its employees with proper training and empowerment to create a culture of excellence. Doing so will transform customer service from a liability to a competitive advantage.
That’s where The Brandt Group comes in. We specialize in staff development through customer experience tools like mystery shopping and leadership training. Together, we can better understand your brand’s strengths and also its vulnerabilities. For over 30 years, we’ve helped our clients deliver their most important product: customer service. If you’re ready to take control of your company’s place in the competitive landscape, let’s put our heads together and make your staff the envy of your community.
