A recent opportunity to deliver a presentation to a Texas state group of elected officials and their deputies confirmed what I’ve read and experienced for many years, reinforcing the indisputable fact that many people on the front lines of customer service interaction don’t receive effective training in how to deal with difficult people (with “effective” being the key word here). That’s not only a sad fact but the consequences are negative across the board resulting in disengaged workers, lost production, and very unhappy clients. Not ironically, during my out- of-town conference stay the hotel fumbled the payment football like the Oilers in the red zone of a Super Bowl. Sorry, the shot was there, and this old school Houston fan had to take it! Of course, how could I pass the opportunity to deliver a mini-course in customer service to them, and they responded exceptionally well! I saved the email as an example of “past wrong, future right”. My passion for the subject lures me into preachy, soapbox territory which itself is counterproductive, so with several deep breaths I offer the following information on how one can without breaking the bank drive forward into win/win/win territory (that’s “past your own 50 yard line” to us Cowboy fans. Watching as a kid the first two Dallas/Green Bay conference championship games earns me the right to be catty).
Surprisingly, a simple, informal poll of the entire group resulted in an almost 100% response rate which I interpreted as their wanting someone to know and understand how they felt about these issues. One of the questions asked them to rate the quality and effectiveness of their departments’ customer service/internal interaction training on a simple scale of 1-3 with “1” being “substandard” and “3” being “very effective” while “2” was “just so-so” or “I received training but it was just average”. Over half the respondents rated their training as only “so so”. Not just “office workers”, these people live day in and day out on the front lines of face-to-face conflict with difficult clients, and more than half of them weren’t effectively trained for it. To me, that poses a problem and forces both workers and customers to operate in unfair environment within which inadequate training often guarantees lose/lose/lose results. I rate that situation as a “-1” unacceptable, as I’m sure any reasonable person would.
My heart went out to them even more when I tallied the results of a second question, “What are the greatest three challenges you personally face in the workplace?”. Again, no surprises here either. By a large majority they responded with the usual (same song, third verse for how many years now?) “Big Three”: unclear/inconsistent direction from their supervisors, lack of engagement by their coworkers, and micromanaging. If, indeed, team trust (and success) is predicated on clear direction and personal initiative it follows that team failure is assured by the absence of either or both. And, not surprisingly, their third, greatest challenge, disengaged coworkers, evolved from the first two since a lack of trust inevitably bears the poisonous fruit of disengagement. Poor communication, a hovering manager, and clock-watching teammates is a gourmet recipe for conflict and failure.
As an eternal optimist I was encouraged to read a further, majority response to the third and final question, “What are your three most effective personal skills dealing with conflict and confrontation?”, and, may God bless them, their lists were shining tributes to the human ability to improvise, adapt, and overcome. They documented their common, collective abilities to remain cool and calm, patiently listen to a clients’ problems (without interrupting!), and creative problem solving. How about that? Does that not make you want to pump you fist in the air and cheer? Somehow, someway, a large and significant number of dedicated, honorable workers developed the skills and rightfully pride themselves on being winners in the serious game of customer service. And judging by their attending behaviors of nodding heads, affirming smiles, and the occasional “air five” during the presentations they clearly showed their endorsement of effective training techniques an the area so near and dear to them. Grinding, daily, and winning.
Originally published in Beaumont Business Journal, Heat And Humanity Column
