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Is Your Workplace Environment Hurting Your Customer Service Efforts?

December 28th, 2009 | Author: Marilyn

My coauthor and I were incredibly fortunate to spend a year interviewing customer service superstars – the leaders and front line staff of ten highly successful companies who excel in customer care – when we were writing “Who’s Your Gladys?” After writing our book, I was invited to assist with and participate in a spectacular train-the-trainer program run by America’s “Number #1 Succes Coach” Jack Canfield. This year-long intense training is allowing me to learn and teach the success principles developed by Jack over the last 30+ years. It’s exciting to notice how the lessons I’m learning from Jack parallel the interviews from the company leaders featured in ”Who’s Your Gladys?”

During one of the trainings, Jack introduced a success pie chart that had a huge impact on me. It originated from Jim Bunch. (If you don’t know about Jim, look him up!) The chart shows that 50% of success comes from your environment, 40% from your mindset, and only 10% from skill. If 50% of success comes from creating environments that support your goals, how can you upgrade your workplace environment to attract and retain more long-term customers? As I looked at the weight that environment plays on success, example after example sprang up based on our year of interviewing successful people.

50% of success comes from your environment, 40% from your mindset, and only 10% from skill.

One example comes from Sky Lakes Hospital. Its customer satisfaction scores raised from the 41st percentile to the top 10% in the nation after a three year customer service culture change. Custom Learning Systems was hired to give the leaders at Sky Lakes tools to support service excellence. One wonderful tool that Sky Lakes adopted was the “Six Foot Rule.”

Every employee, hospital-wide, is required to look up, make eye-contact, and say something pleasant when they pass within six feet of anyone – a patient, visitor, or even a fellow employee. This rule has changed the environment at Sky Lakes. The expectation was non-negotiable. People were held accountable. What happened? For some, the workplace got a whole lot friendlier and much more enjoyable. Unfortunately, for some of the Sky Lakes staff, this new rule was intolerable. In fact, some of the employees actually quit their jobs because they didn’t want to follow the new rule. It didn’t match their cynical dispositions. The upside? This new environment organically weeded out those who didn’t fit the new service excellence culture. more…