The Covid-19 Blame Game

I received an email from Comcast on July 29th asking me if I was still experiencing the problem I called about on June 25th.

The first thought that came to my mind was “Really? You wait over a month to ask me if the problem I called about has been resolved?”

It’s been so long since the original call that I can’t even remember what the heck I called about!

It would be great if we could blame this example of poor customer service on Covid-19, but we can’t. The message sent to me was clearly an automated email. And whose idea was this to follow up by email, rather than a phone call? 

Clearly, someone hired the wrong person to manage the customer experience. Or perhaps the people who were assigned to follow up with customers got a better job offer and quit.

Right now, a lot of businesses are blaming poor decisions made by leaders on Covid-19. 

Currently,  businesses are saying to expect longer wait times than normal. My bank for example tells me it will take 7-10 days to get an email response. 7-10 days for an email response.

Why?

A customer service line told me because of the pandemic their wait times are longer than usual and I could expect to wait at least 60-90 minutes. 

Why?

A company that normally ships fast tells me it's going to be weeks before they even process my order.

Why?

Leadership decisions are being delayed.

Why?

Important strategic decisions are being pushed aside.

Why?

No doubt, the pandemic has created unprecedented stress on people, process, and productivity. 

If we’re being honest with one another, a lot of these leadership issues were problems way before any of us even heard the word coronavirus.

I mean, we’ve been told to expect longer than normal wait times for what seems like forever now. There are times that I’ve gotten so tired of waiting, that I’ve gone downstairs to make my lunch, came back to my office, and was still on hold!

Maybe Comcast doesn’t have enough people on staff or the people they have in place, aren’t all that great. It’s not my job to determine this. It’s the job of the leader.

I see this all the time in organizations.

People on teams that are barely getting by. They weren’t doing much before the pandemic and they’re certainly not doing much now. 

Leaders keep telling themselves that things will get better. They rarely do.  

Then there’s the issue of workload. 

These same leaders keep piling on work to certain people, who they know will get the job done, to make up for the non-performers. They’re then surprised when their great employees tell them they’ve just accepted another job. 

Managers making lousy hiring decisions has been a problem for years, and is still a problem today. Even more so now that many hiring managers are unable to meet candidates in person. 

While it’s easy to blame the individual, the company is often partially at fault. 

There’s either a poor hiring process in place or in many cases no hiring process. 

Hiring managers don’t know how to select for success. As a result, job offers are made to people who never should have been hired in the first place.

Employees aren’t onboarded when they arrive and are left to figure things out on their own.

It’s a mess!

All of this leads to high employee turnover, which has a huge impact on the business, both from a financial standpoint and overall operations.

Experts say that employee turnover costs somewhere in the neighborhood of two or even three times a person’s total compensation. 

Don’t listen to the experts. Instead, do your own research.

Here’s an exercise I take my clients through which you can do right now.

1. Think of a position that is extremely valuable to your organization. Jot this down.
2. Next to this position, note how many times in the past five years you’ve had to fill this role due to an employee leaving.
3. Now write down how much you think it costs everytime this position turns over.
4. Next, click on the link to my FREE employee turnover calculator and calculate the real cost of employee turnover.

Was your number more or less than you thought? What surprised you the most, after going through this exercise?

One client with particularly high turnover in one department used the calculator to estimate the cost at around $176,000. This might not seem horrible if you're only spending that every 20 years. The problem was they were spending it every 20 weeks!!?!

If you’d like, you can email me your results at [email protected] and we can spend a few minutes on the phone to discuss what you can do to dramatically improve your employee turnover rates and lower the financial impact this is having on your organization.

You can also reach out to me about working directly with some of your leaders, who would greatly benefit from executive coaching.