People Smoke In Vegas
I stood in line attempting to check into Harrah’s Las Vegas. I’d come late to the conference because I needed to be with my dad at a doctor’s appointment earlier that day in Florida. I rushed straight from his appointment to the airport, traveled nine and a half hours to get to the last thirty minutes of a company happy hour, then came here.
Because I hadn’t checked in the day prior, like I originally planned, they booked my room. Fair enough. They can’t let a vacant room go to waste during a conference. But, I knew that would happen and I’d already tried to call as well as fix this issue online. As they say in Vegas, no dice. And now, no room.
The young lady at the front desk was courteous but couldn’t do much besides offer me a smoking room. I’ve been on her side of the desk so I tried to make that solution, the only one she had the power to authorize, work. I went to the 24th floor and walked into a room whose walls had cigarette smoke still caked in from the 80’s. I couldn’t do it. My clothes would smell like smoke, my lungs would hate me, and I’d have a headache for the three days.
The next customer service rep was similar to the first: polite, concerned about my problem, but mostly powerless. I asked if she could simply cancel the charges for the night and I could book a room next door at LINQ since there was nothing left in all of Harrah’s. The manager, a younger fella with a beard that needed a trim, came over.
“Sir,” he asked with a perfected tone I recognized, “would you mind waiting for ten or fifteen minutes? If you can, that will give me time to get a room cleaned for you.”
“Not another smoking room, correct?”
“No sir, it’s actually a suite because that’s all we have available. Non-smoking.”
“Sure, I need to grab some food anyways. Thank you so much.”
I didn’t want to go to another hotel nor was I going to demand a suite (also wasn’t going to turn one down). There was miscommunication and my room had been taken. The hotel could’ve made it easier to change reservations and I could have tried harder to notify someone of my travel adjustments. I applaud Bearded Manager #1 for owning and fixing the problem. This lead me to think about empowering your own team to solve problems.
Customer Service Enablement
To enable someone to provide high-quality customer service, you first have to know what allows someone to actually provide said service. The young gent in my story was able to solve the predicament because of three factors:
- Authority – The powers that be have bestowed in him the authority to make adjustments that affect the bottom line. Many organizations, especially small business owners, allow as few people as possible to have this kind of power. His front-line colleagues didn’t have it.
- Mastery – He had access to enough information to be able to solve the problem. He knew I just wanted a room without cigarette smoke permeating it’s linens. Another example: What if we’re all out of apples? Well, do you like oranges? How about bananas? Because I know you’re probably just hungry, so let’s see what we can do to solve that problem without dwelling on the fact that I don’t have anymore apples.
- Confidence – Not only was this guy empowered to make decisions, he was confident in them. He may have had to get this approved or he may be reprimanded for it later, I don’t know. But, he knew that solving a customer’s problem was more important than waiting any longer. He made a decision and he solved my problem. For that, I am grateful and I will be talking to everyone about my gratefulness.
Now that we understand what makes up good customer service, we can grow that in our team.
- Give Authority – Give your front line people the authority to affect your bottom line. Start it with a small cap, maybe $25 per issue and then they need approval from a manager. Then bump that up. Then do it again. Then double it. At what point does it stop being profitable to have your front-line people solve issues? I don’t know, and you probably don’t either.
- Teach Mastery – Teach your team! Maybe it’s a session on conflict resolution. Maybe it’s providing better knowledge on what’s in stock. Maybe it’s sharing real examples of what to do and what not to do so your people know what the precedent should be.
- Build Confidence – This one is actually the easiest. If you give people authority to make decisions and teach them how to become masters of their job, their confidence will come. Be careful though, you cannot empower people and then publicly humiliate them for mistakes. Mishaps will happen, you have to use them as teach moments (see point #2).
If you do these things for your front line people and allow them to solve customer problems at the customer’s first interaction, great things will happen. A) Customers will appreciate the time it took to solve issues, which will make them like you more. B) It will also free up your manager to do things other than deal with pissed off people. C) If your front line people are tasked with taking care of customer issues themselves, not being able to dish them off to a manager, they’ll stop making as many mistakes in the first place.
What are some other examples of enabling the front line?
