Put Your Best Staff Forward

You may have seen all the fuss about the girl who wrote an open letter to her CEO at Yelp in which she moans she can’t afford groceries on what she gets paid and goes to bed hungry.

I won’t go into the mechanics of it now but if you haven’t read the letter, knock yourself out with it later. (Remember though, you will never get those 5 minutes of your life back.)

By the end of the day that she’d published the post, she was sacked and is now looking for another position. With her name so hot at the moment, that might be a while – something she perhaps should have thought of before hitting publish.

She worked in the customer support section covering a 7-day period as a first-time employee. That means inexperienced entry-level folks are dealing with angry customers and appeasing them with vouchers to placate them as a way to quiet them down. Surely if this is the one time a customer interacts with the brand and contacts support for help, their first and only impression of them should be an outstanding one? With little experience on hand, I don’t see how.

Yet we see this all the time. I mentioned a problem about another product at the grocery check-out recently but she was so uninterested in passing the information on to her supervisor, I wondered why I’d bothered. Check-out operators are possibly the only time customers ever interact with the brand, and again the experience should not be mediocre but be outstanding. You don’t need to dress them up with roller skates or pop party poppers, but a smile, genuine casual conversation and a will to make the place a better shopping experience for all can’t be that hard.

In my local hairdresser, the junior is not allowed to answer the telephone, they don’t yet have the required skills and knowledge to deliver outstanding first impressions. Down the line, yes, but not as the junior.

If I were running Yelp, I ‘d make damn sure the people who felt they needed customer support got it from an experienced team member rather than someone at entry-level. Remember what you (and I) were like in our first real jobs?

We just didn’t have the experience, confidence or the maturity of our workmates to do the same as them until much later.

Yes it’s a fine line and some positions don’t pay well I get that, just don’t put them on the front line until they have proven themselves and can deliver outstanding experience.

A side note: businesses are keen to spend on marketing and getting it just right, yet pay a pittance to their customer facing staff. Where is the sense in attracting new customers only to let them down when they need something? I guess the saying ‘throw enough mud at the wall and some will stick” is their strategy.

Can you tell it makes me mad? #customerservicenut

What are your thoughts?

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I am the author of three books (Wiley) on social media marketing and building relationships and you can find them all here. I am also an Extended DISC accredited consultant. You might like to subscribe to me for more useful updates and if you are looking for a speaker or trainer for your next event, do get in touch.