Worker Care Before Customer Care
A Fortune magazine article about T-Mobile executive Sue Nokes provides excellent advice about caring for your customer. I first became aware of T-Mobile when my daughter signed up despite my cautions to avoid new players. It was their pricing that initially caught my eye, but I’ve grown to enjoy their customer service. Here’s Sue’s worker care approach to customer care:
1. LISTEN- folks on the front line hear the customer- listen to them and make changes based on that.
2. DEVELOP- lay out a clear career path to achieve personal goals.
3. EDUCATE- provide coaching and training to do their jobs.
4. CELEBRATE- success, defined in terms of the customer, should be recognized and rewarded.
I’m a big fan of DEVELOP since employees that feel you are interested in their personal goals will work hard for you to be successful.
Sue’s initial approach took a page out of the lean brand of respect; she launched a listening campaign simply asking for customer complaints and what problems employees were having in doing their jobs. The change was dramatic:
“Everybody came out crying. The people said they had never felt so inspried in their lives, and that they had never met with any leader at that level who cared.”
Care- an overused word really starts with the worker.
What do you think? Are you in a situation where customer care hinges on worker care? What works, what doesn’t? What do you think of the four elements of worker/customer care? Which one is most important to you?
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Tags: celebrate, customer-care, develop, educate, lean, listen, respect, strategy, worker-careRelated Stories
POSTED IN: 101 Basics
2 opinions for Worker Care Before Customer Care
Phil Gerbyshak
Jan 8, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Bob - Great article! I think employee care MUST come before customer care. How you treat your employees is how they’ll treat their customers. It’s obvious, and yet folks overlook it. It’s actually cheaper to be nice to people and treat them like adults than it is to police them and treat them like little kids, or worse, to abuse them.
Love your people, and they will love you back! Treat them with respect and honesty, and they’ll do the same with their customers.
I wrote an article about this called Share Your CARE with Your Team. Might be interesting for you.
Bob
Jan 9, 2008 at 12:58 am
Phil- I really expected a lot more commenting on this one! Most customer care programs seem to forget about the worker! Your “Share Your Care” post sheds more light as do the comments to it. I liked the reference to stewardship from Rosa.
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