The Drive to Serve Also Heals

In my last post, I wrote about the importance of customer zealotry to developing a loyal and engaged customer base. My thinking has always been that the more you empower your workforce to work closely with their clients to provide the best service possible, and to share those best practices with the rest of your team, the more loyal, and even evangelical, your customers will be.

But customer zealotry as a collective goal is not just a means to greater customer engagement and loyalty. While working with a global client company with retail storefronts, we found it could also be a catalyst for healing rifts between internal groups at the retail level whose communication and interactions with different divisions were historically antagonistic.

Find a Way to Help, Find a Way to Care

Tackling soured relationships begins with finding a way to help and care.  Through the use of personal storytelling to create an initial basis for trust and by having the employees in the field emphasize what was riding on the collective success of the team, we set out to help the conflicting groups collaborate on creating ways to improve the customer experience, leading to better business results for each store. But it could only work if everyone was motivated to work with, and not against, each other.

As soon as the dialogue opened, it became clear the groups that needed to cooperate were not seeing “eye to eye.” At one store, departments that were literally next to each other "hated each other … and it showed in [their] customer service," reported one field manager. The problem was so widespread, and it showed in abysmal online ratings and other indicators of subpar customer experience across the universe of franchised stores.

Interviewing to Understand the Other Groups' View

At another storefront facing a similar conflict, we encouraged one supervisor to try something that eventually became a best practice: Department managers were asked to interview other groups' employees. Questions like "Why do you come to work?" and "How do your decisions affect others?" began to open up communication channels, resulting in acknowledgement of past relationship problems and creating greater empathy among workers and between the groups.

The supervisor brought employees together and inspired them to think not just about their own desk, their own problems, their own direct reports, their own customers, but to understand how the sum of everyone's actions rippled out to affect the experience of all who worked there and, consequently, how it impacted their customers.

The method moved the needle in the right direction, said one sales manager who participated in the cross-group interviews. "After many employee interviews and manager meetings, something started to change. Slowly, the managers began to talk more and openly share goals. What was once a room full of adversaries became a team."

This new spirit of collaboration – in that location and many others across storefronts nationwide – made it easier for individuals and teams to think big. The collaborative "we" became more robust, the power of working together was celebrated and the more bonded teams, with a little bit of coaching, agreed that it made sense to aim high. They wouldn't just try to please customers; they would gain a reputation for the best customer service in the region. Teams began to share their best practices and look for areas of synchronicity, where one group's resources could help another.

Teams also began to challenge each other. "In my last team meeting,” said one manager, “I put my resume up on the screen and made my teammates write theirs. They asked why. I said, 'Because if you don’t think you are good enough to work somewhere else then you are not good enough to work here, so let’s get your resume done.’”

Building Personal Relationships

The need to boost customer zealotry also served as a justification for managers and stores to “lean in” and build intimacy. Another manager established a best practice when he made it a personal policy to regularly reach out to his store owners at random to get to know them as people. He’d share good company news or some tidbit of information he knew would interest them personally, as a friend. If he was driving around and one of them came to mind, he got on his cell phone and called them – just to say hello and ask if there was anything he could do to help.

These quick informal check-ins made all the difference. Once, he happened to call a store owner on the day that owner's first grandson was born, which allowed him to offer congratulations and send gifts. That simple act permanently and dramatically changed the tone and context for all their future discussions. Regular, open communications offered in a spirit of generosity, and with no particular business agenda, made tough conversations far less confrontational.

Word spread quickly when colleagues heard of this manager’s success. Other managers began reaching out – drawing up lists of people at the stores including but not limited to the owners to call and thank.

Better Relationships With Customers, Too

The synergy is clear: Efforts to serve the customer were repairing relationships long strained by the “old ways” of doing things, and that was making things better for customers. "Our relationship has definitely improved,” said one store owner of the managers that stop by his storefront. “We’re getting to know each other. And I’m sure I’m, in turn, convincing them, both with my actions and our improved customer experience results, that I definitely have their best interests at heart."

Setting a goal of providing the best customer service that goes above and beyond the norm doesn’t just result in making your customers happy. When the entire team, both within and across divisions, buys into the new way of working with customers, everyone comes out of the experience revitalized and ready to work together, rather than at odds with each other.

For more from Keith you can follow along on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.