Like a Virgin: Secrets They Won't Teach You at Business School

EMPOWERMENT AND APPRECIATION

I recently received a very interesting letter:

Great questions. An organisation must establish a clear framework to which employees can refer when carrying out their duties. Such a framework will have to involve written procedures and rules – particularly when cash and accounting are at issue. That said, however, sometimes rules really are made to be broken: the rulebook should not become an excuse for poor customer service or an obstacle to great service. Almost everyone has at some point experienced a situation where a customer service representative has blamed the rules for his inability to help. It will usually begin with ‘I’m sorry but the regulations state quite clearly…’

If your company is going to stand out from the rest because of its truly excellent customer service, staffers should treat the rules more as flexible guidelines, to be followed as the situation demands. The customer is not always right – and neither is the rulebook. The customer service representative’s goal should be to strike a balance that serves both the customer’s and company’s interests in the best way possible.

To a great extent, this can be achieved by empowering customer contact staff to use their common sense when handling questions and problems. Encouraging a good attitude towards problem solving is crucial, but so is a corporate culture that rewards initiative and does not discourage a creative approach.

One customer service mantra that I have always loved is ‘First to know, first to handle’. In other words, when a problem arises, there is a fleeting opportunity to solve it on the spot. One great example of this comes from Virgin America, when a flight was delayed in San Francisco. While the passengers waited for news, the crew brought the drinks trolley out to the gate and served drinks to the guests. A few months later, I called into an all-employee meeting to award that crew with a ‘Vammy’ Virgin America’s annual staff award.

Resolving problems this way has multiple benefits for both the customer and the company. For the customer, the advantages are obvious: the problem is solved, or at least alleviated. And for the company there is an obvious public-relations benefit: the customer is likely to tell other people how well the situation was handled. There are also significant cost benefits – for example, a reduction in the number of back-office customer relations staffers required to handle the usually protracted back and forth process for resolving formal customer complaints.

At Virgin, a few senior managers and I host an annual ‘Stars Dinner’ to recognise top performers – staff members who have been nominated by their peers – and celebrate their achievements. I haven’t missed one yet. We look for the best examples of customer service, innovation, community service and environmental work. This kind of event demonstrates to employees that you care about them and that you notice and appreciate their hard work and initiative.

In the world of customer service, nice words from a supervisor are relatively easy to come by; the real proof is in positive feedback from customers. That’s when you know that the right kind of culture is taking hold.

I was particularly pleased by a note I received recently from Phil Williamson, a Virgin customer in Kenya who wrote to me about a trip to London he’d booked with his wife. Shortly before the trip, Phil’s wife was travelling for business and was able to meet Phil in London using a plane ticket she’d received from a client. So they put her original ticket aside to use another time, but later, when they tried to book a new flight using that ticket, they found that it had expired because they hadn’t paid a change fee.

Hawa, a Virgin representative in Kenya, explained the Williamsons’ situation to an accountant, who evidently told her that rules are rules, and that the airline could not make an exception in this case. In the end, though, Hawa appealed to another supervisor, the ticket was refunded and a new one was purchased.

‘All’s well that ends well,’ Phil told me. ‘But wouldn’t it have been so much better if the accountant had displayed a little more general business sense instead of sticking to his strict interpretation [of the rules]?’

This tale aptly demonstrates how close organisations come to losing customers every day, due to rigid adherence to rules and not enough thought on the part of a few front-line employees. Keep in mind this classic statistic: an unhappy customer will tell ten people about a problem, while a satisfied customer will only tell four people about a good experience.

So, work on developing a corporate culture that tries to ‘catch employees doing something right’ and rewards dedication and initiative. Empowering and taking care of your staff is the best way to look after your customers and keep them coming back for more.