No can do

After a long day, decided to relax over a drink and catch up with some colleagues from out of town at a nearby brewery.

'Can you turn down the music? We came here to chat'

'This is a bar, this is the right volume, we ALWAYS play it at this level'

'It is a Tuesday evening, it's just us and we see a table of 4 other professionals like us trying to have a conversation and an otherwise empty bar. Do turn down the volume'

'No, you should understand that this is the RIGHT level'

The supervisor who walked into the tail end of the argument and caught our not-so-happy body language signaled the service person, turned down the volume, and assigned a different employee to our table.

Catching up with several friends after many years, lunch at a popular local joint.

'One maharaja thali, four regular thalis, and the rest will order what they want'

'Sorry, we only serve maharaja thalis in this section of the restaurant, if you want regular thalis, you can change to the other section'

'But we are a group of 8, all tables there are two and four-seaters'

'You can sit at two tables'

'Why would we do that - we are meeting each other after a long while and trying to have lunch together'

'Sorry sir, then you have to go for maharaja thalis only'

'My 86-year-old dad, my diabetic friend, and my tiny niece all don't each such huge quantities - they want the regular thali'

'Sorry, then change seats'

'Call your manager, this won't work'

After the manager came, we won. We sat together, ate our non-maharaja thalis, and generally had a good time.

Both incidents interest me, as a student of customer experience. What causes such indifference to rather simple and obvious customer needs, that frontline refuse to accommodate them?

Is it a lack of empathy? Is empathy a trait that should only come into play when a person moves up to a supervisory role?

Is it a lack of empowerment - an inability to bend and flex the standard design to accommodate customers? Are all levels of empowerment only available to supervisors?

Is it indifference - a lack of interest, an attitude of 'I am here to do what I am told to do? What you ask for is outside the scope of that, so sorry, no-can-do'

Is it an issue of design and laid down standards - does the design consider scenarios and build options and decisions? Are standards designed around customer needs at different points?

I believe it is a combination of all the above, but at the heart of it, the way to crack it is in the design.

When you design right, and implement the design through your front-line who have an understanding of the 'why' behind the 'what', then you can get it right most of the time.

Let us take both service experiences.

First, I can't blame the young man from a remote village in UP for not understanding the difference between a weekend crowd at his bar, there to unwind and swing to loud music, and the weekday 'post-work' crowd who want to unwind and converse.

If the standards were flexible and designed to accommodate different, but regular, customer scenarios, and the employee trained on using the right one for the given scenario, such obvious customer pain points could be minimized.

In the second scenario, the design was more flawed than the first. The larger the group at a restaurant, the stronger the possibility of people wanting to choose different offerings on your menu. And asking them to sit at a section where choices were limited, was counter-intuitive. The reason offered to us - that the section was set up to serve the smaller thali wasn't even valid. I won't be surprised if the staff was being instructed, maybe even incentivized, to push the 'maharaja thali' and discourage the customers from the cheaper, normal thali. But even if that was the case, 'upselling' is a skill that needs to be taught - get the customer to want the maharaja thali, not to force it on him.

In both cases, the supervisors came in and gave the customer what she wanted - making the frontline look small and mean, and the supervisor a hero, a customer champion. I am not sure the frontline employee felt good, enjoyed the feeling of having 'lost' to the customer.

So all you folks who design customer experience and frontline service standards, do ensure two things while you do so.

First - consider all scenarios, and understand the customer's use of your product or service. Go over to your Gemba where the customer experience is being delivered. Go to the competitor's Gemba. Observe, capture, and then design.

Second - it is not 'soft-skills' training that the frontline needs. Customer experience isn't enhanced if the guy learns to smile and say no. It is all about helping your frontline look good, 'win' with the customer, 'win' for the customer. Give them usable standards that minimize the 'no'. Teach them to choose the right one at the right time. Allow them appropriate channels to feedback to the designer so that you can capture all nuances and refine the standards.

BTW, I saw a not-so-soft side to my friend Piyush for the first time; and realised that when you deliver mindless 'no' to a customer, even someone so mild and sweet-tempered can lose it.

#customerexperience #frontlinedelivery #servicedesign #standards #management #experiencedesign #customerservice