The Clifton Review
The Clifton Review is a tri-weekly column that examines the question of the Clifton project along with the evolution of the war between two billionaires. We covered the start of this war with articles describing the battle over easement rights, the mysterious burning of a home, the blocks to rebuilding, and countless questionable court filings.
While the 2018 series salutes fashion mogul Peter Nygård’s Golden Jubilee detailing his rags to riches story, his incredible business success over these past fifty years and an inside look at how he did it, The Clifton Review will also continue to address current affairs as they relate to the good of The Bahamas.
3 Important Keys To Great Customer Service
By P.J. Malone
Knowing that good customer service does not occur by happenstance, what can businesses do to ensure that all of their organizational components are aligned with proving great service?
As previously mentioned, there are three core things businesses have to focus on to be effective with lining up employees with a goal of providing stellar customer service. Let’s review each of them:
- Set the right foundation
Setting the right foundation is one of the most important things you can do to align your employees with your company’s purpose, strategies and objectives. It involves communicating what your company is all about, where the company is trying to go and what the company is trying to achieve.
Why is this essential?
When employees are not aware of the core components of your company or its makeup, then it is very difficult for you to align human resources with organizational purpose and strategies, and employees would have no idea of how to work to help you achieve your business objectives.
When one company was trying to understand their organization’s problems through an organizational review, an employee complained that they had no idea where the company was going. The individual explained that it was like all the employees being in a row boat and being told to row, but not being told where they are heading. He complained that everybody could be rowing toward Miami when the intention is to head to New York.
This is a perfect example of mistakenly thinking that you don’t need to share the company’s purpose or organizational objectives with employees. If you think about it, it’s the only way to make sure everyone is on the same page and working toward the same goals.
Fashion mogul Peter Nygard has managed to be very effective in communicating his important goal of everyone focusing on always exceeding expectations. When you watch interviews with his associates across his organization, they all seem to be singing from the same hymn book—they all talk about the importance of the customer and the focus on making sure the customer is happy.
That is quite a feat across an organization with thousands of employees around the world. (In an upcoming article, we’ll discuss how he does this.) Clearly Nygard sees the value and the benefit of communicating what the company is about with his employees.
- Motivate Your Employees
I think it goes without saying that it is important to motivate employees within your organization to work toward your desired end result. You have no choice but to be dependent on them to be effective in helping you achieve your business goals. When they are motivated, employees can help you increase sales.
When employees are not motivated, they can hurt your business. Good employees can quit for more fulfilling experiences elsewhere, which costs the company money to recruit and train new staff. Also, employees can unintentionally sabotage sales from a general lack of interest or unwillingness to help customers, which can also cost you money.
- Give employees the tools to deliver the end result
Imagine if you owned a construction company and your workers are at a construction site working to build a structure, but you didn’t give them a hammer or a drill or a saw or screwdrivers or a hard hat or a measuring tape; is this structure ever likely to get built?
In a services business, for example, the types of tools you give your employees may not be so obvious. We’ll discuss all the possible ways of setting your employees up to succeed.
The bottom line is that, no matter what type of business you are in, employees cannot be effective or achieve your business goals without the right tools. They have to be set up to succeed.
Each of these three aspects for aligning your human resources will be discussed in detail in upcoming editions.
