Moments of Truth - Empowering teams for success

How many times have you been in a situation as the customer where you become exasperated at the process being used as an excuse for poor service?

“I’m sorry, our process does not allow us to do that”.

More often than not, good customer service comes as a pleasant surprise as it is not the norm. In my opinion, the key reason for this situation is a lack of trust given by managers to their staff. Trust appears to be the major limiting factor causing employees not to step out of their role or comfort zone to ensure customer success. Perhaps now where companies are having to trust their employees to work remotely and do the right thing, they can take a further step to empower their staff to impact their customers’ Moment of Truth.

With the current global COVID19 crisis, many businesses are realising they can trust their employees to work from home and are seeing in many cases they are actually able to also be more productive. It is my strong view now is the time for companies to make a culture change towards trust, empowering their employees and giving them the responsibility for the success of their customers, and by default the whole company.

In the early 1990’s I read a life-changing book; Moments of Truth by Jan Carlzon, previous President of Scandinavian Airlines (SAS). With great example stories, the book expounds on how Carlzon defined customer service at SAS by empowering every employee to impact the customers' experience. Carlzon defined the Moment of Truth in business as:

Any time a customer comes into contact with a business, however remote, they have an opportunity to form an impression.

According to Carlzon, if you manage every interaction to create a positive outcome, the business would be successful, which indeed proved right for SAS, becoming one of the most admired airlines at the time.

The first 15-second encounter between a passenger and the frontline people, from ticket agent to flight attendant sets the tone for the entire company in the mind of the customer.

·     Everyone needs to know and feel they are needed

·     Everyone wants to be treated as an individual

·     Giving someone the freedom to take responsibility release resources that would otherwise remain concealed

·     An individual without information cannot take responsibility, and an individual who is given information cannot help by taking responsibility

Jan Carlzon

So where do you start? How do you impact your company culture with this kind of change?The short answer is it can be easy, or it can be hard. It can be easy if your managers actually care about their teams, will work to help bring each individuals strength to the fore, and will essentially then trust them to do the right thing. This is where the empowering comes in.

Fast forward 15 years from my reading Moments of Truth, and as a Technical Team Manager for a software company, I found one of the most empowering books I had gifted to me by one of my clients was FISH! By Stephen C. Lundin, Harry Paul, and John Christensen. The Fish! Philosophy, modelled after the Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle, is aimed at creating happy individuals in the workplace.

The central four ideas of the book/philosophy are:

·     Choose your attitude

·     Play

·     Make someone’s day

·     Be there

Personally, I embraced the FISH! Philosophy hook, line, and sinker, ultimately putting my team of 13 Sales Engineers through what proved to be a gruelling and cathartic ? day workshop. Each team member had been tasked to present for 5-10 minutes on who they were, and to share some personal information about themselves others may not know. I kicked the session off sharing personal things about myself no one in the room knew about me. With the barrier to sharing unleashed, each subsequent team member presented about themselves, often raising the bar on how deep they went with their sharing. At one stage during a certain team member's presentation, at least half the room were in tears on learning the pain and long road he had travelled as an immigrant to Australia before eventually being in the role he was in.

The short and also long term result we achieved as a team was to become more cohesive and essentially caring about fellow team members. Where previously people showed up for work and did their job, they were now going out of their way to help each other, and also people from other teams and departments. Sharing some of their most personal information with fellow team members had created a circle of trust in the group, often spreading to other parts of the company. Later the Executive team even adopted my session approach for one of our Executive team meetings with great results.

Perhaps it’s the rigidity of organisations that creates the feeling the company does not trust me, or the silos of information resulting in people not having the detail often need to best serve the customer? Is it managers fearing a loss of control, or concern their staff could do the wrong thing?

To circle back on Jan Carlzon and Moments of Truth, for many years the SAS brand promise was: “We’re there for our customers, not the other way around”

Carlson's' theory was front line workers, those who have direct contact with the customers, are the company’s most important asset.

So, what are you doing at your company to empower your staff to ensure the customers’ success, and removing gaps in the process and between teams?