Call Center Management Featured Article
Customer and Employee Engagement Attitudes from the Five-Star Hotel Industry
Every day, millions of customer-to-company connections take place all over the world. Customers may initiate the connection because they have a problem or a need that needs to be met, and companies may reach out because they have an offer for the customer. This is business as usual, and it’s been the case for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The real problem is that in most cases, it’s a chore for both customers and company representatives. For the former, it’s often a dreaded chore. For the latter, it’s an unwelcome but necessary means to keeping a job.
While we may never reach a time when customers and company agents rejoicing in communicating with one another – we live in the real world, after all, not a Disney (News - Alert) movie – it is possible to remove the dread from the transactions. We can create customers who don’t dislike the idea of reaching out, and we can create workers who aren’t always running on the knife edge of a breakdown, or quitting their jobs. “Engagement,” which is an important concept in business today, can be applied to both customers and employees, but not without effort on the part of the company. You’re going to have to spend money. You’re going to have to ensure you have competent and caring managers. You will probably have to take the time to put new technologies or systems in place. Most of all, you’re going to have to hire agents or representatives who are doing more than filling a chair with a warm body (and pay the accordingly!). To achieve true customer engagement, these people cannot be robots reciting a script, wrote Micah Solomon for Forbes after an interview with a director at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company.
“Of course, this is more challenging than doing things by rote: challenging for the employee and challenging for their manager,” he wrote. “You can’t directly teach an employee what to say, because great customer engagement depends on every employee engaging with guests in a way that works for them (the employee) authentically–as well as conforming to what the particular guest is looking for at the time.”
The Ritz-Carlton, of course, enjoys a five-star relationship because it understands this concept and has for decades. Many people, when they think of the pinnacle of the hotel business, think of the Ritz. The company certain didn’t achieve its status by rushing guests through transactions, offering canned greetings, and responding to requests for help with, “I’m sorry, we’re not allowed to do that.”
Solomon writes that it’s important to think about customer engagement as an all-or-nothing game.
“There is no neutral in the customer experience; as a leader you are either contributing or detracting from the behavior of your employees,” he wrote. “In other words, the reality is that you’re always talking to your employees, with and without words: telling them stories, modeling behaviors, praising and critiquing what goes on in your organization.”
There is an increasing amount of evidence today that both types of engagement, employee and customer, stem from the actions of managers. Managers who lead and inspire will create employees who go above and beyond to please customers. Managers who antagonize and play power games will create disengaged agents who dread their jobs and who inspire nothing but anger in customers. If your goal in the new year is boost the quality of the customer relationship, take a good long look at your managers and their dynamic with employees. You may not like what you see.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi