The Change Agent Blog:

One Size Fits All Doesn’t

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Spring arrived very early in Ohio and the great weather occurred the week that both boys were home from college during their Spring Break which was really nice. If you can’t afford to go to Florida, it’s terrific to have 80 degree weather in Ohio! It was great to have them home but admittedly my work tripled for that week. However, I would not trade my clean house for them not being here anytime soon. I know that just around the corner they will be moving out permanently.

Speaking of moving out, we are slowly readying our house so we can put it on the market and downsize to a smaller home with less taxes. As I’ve been doing my homework by going to open houses, I realize how stuck I’ve been with a certain look in our home. Seeing other homes is getting me excited about becoming more of a minimalist. Our home stager was brutal in making suggestions so that everything looks generic for a one-size-fits-all-home which is much easier to sell.

Unfortunately, that’s how many organizations tend to make their customer service “rules” and award systems – one-size fits all. It rarely works – not with customers or staff. Your employees who serve your customers want individual recognition and they want to provide input as to how to serve your customers more effectively. See below for three of my tips for organizations from my 107 Tips for Developing Customer Loyalty booklet:

Tips for Developing Your Customer Loyalty:

• Develop a customer service reward and incentive system, which may include a point system for gift certificates or funding for external continuing education. Encourage competition for better customer service only if it rewards internal teamwork.
• Ask employees for ideas on how to provide better customer service. They know how to improve service because they are the people on the front lines delivering service and hearing customer feedback. Really listen to employees. Compensate for good ideas where there is a return on investment.
• Have the CEO send a thank-you letter to employees who are delivering exceptional service.

One final note of interest: By request, I’m developing a brand-new program for one of my clients on Rebuilding Trust in the Workplace. Let me know if you are interested in more details as I’m very excited with my initial research because rebuilding trust in organizations is very similar to what I teach in prison ministry. Here’s the brief description so far:

Plant closings, mergers, acquisitions, bullying bosses, fear of job loss unfortunately are prevalent in today’s workplace. Leaders, peers, colleagues, suppliers, and even customers have been or feel betrayed – their trust is gone or being severely strained. Most organizations totally underestimate the considerable costs of compromised trust in the workplace.

The good news is that while betrayal in the workplace and resulting loss of trust may be inevitable, the consequences can be reversed. And in some cases, the work necessary to reverse the loss of trust is so powerful that the team or the company is actually stronger for the effort. This workshop will guide participants through the transformational work required to make their organization healthy and provide them with tools to help them become the most powerful expressions of their best selves.

Based on Dennis and Michelle Reina’s book, Rebuilding Trust in the Workplace: Seven Steps to Renew Confidence, Commitment, and Energy; and Stephen Covey’s best-selling books on Trust as well as four years of transformational inner healing ministry with prison inmates and human trafficking victims, Patti delivers a cutting-edge program that helps people who have been betrayed in a trusting situation by providing a holistic method for releasing emotional “baggage” and assimilating th e lessons learned from the experience. It will also help people who have accidentally or deliberately betrayed others. Both will discover constructive new ways of carrying on.

Make it a great Spring!