Dealing With Unreasonable Customers

OK High performance leaders, here's a question for you: what's more important and comes first in your priorities -- customers or team members?

I've worked with many organizations that always put customers first. A few teams would also focus on team member happiness (or at least say they do).

Here's the problem. Unhappy team members create more unhappy customers. Here's another problem: really poorly behaving customers make it so rough for team members that they also become unhappy, spreading the unhappiness around. That's not the result we want.

Conversely, nice customers recognize the hard work that team members do. Polite customer realize that they may not always BE the center of the universe. Smart and reasonable customers realize that you are not entitled to something just because you demand it and that demanding it progressively louder does not increase the merits of your case.

Can't we all play well together?

As a high performance leader, I encourage you to consider the health and dignity of your team members first. Treated with respect most team members will do a wonderful job of building great relationships with customers. Allowed to be disrespected by customers, even the strong team members could lose hope and energy.

I've seen the impact of watching leadership march an unruly customer out the door and invite them to shop somewhere else. For the rest of the day (maybe the rest of the week) the team was totally energized and reached new levels of loyalty to the organization.

The world is full of nice customers. Let the rude, unreasonable ones shop someplace else.

-- Douglas Brent Smith

If you'd like to train your supervisors to build more customer happiness and team member happiness while improving your bottom-line results, contact me today about bringing our workshops to your location. A great place to start is with Supervising for Success.

doug@frontrangeleadership.com

Comments

The Benefits of Supervisory Training

When was the last time you had any leadership training? How often do the supervisors in your organization get training? If you are like most organizations, it's never enough. Some teams go without any supervisory training at all and expect supervisors and managers to learn as they go, on the job. Unfortunately, while it is memorable to learn from your mistakes, it comes at a high cost. People get tired. People leave. Important accounts go away. Customers complain. And teams struggle without the skills and knowledge it takes to build cohesive teams that are capable of solving problems, improving performance and achieving goals. Admittedly, I can be expected to support training since I'm in the business. Still, take a closer look at your own leadership career and decide for yourself. Are leaders better off with more training and development or with less? Supervisory training can generate benefits that pay off long after the training is over. Here are just a few of the things sup...

Leadership Decisions

Decision making is never a burden when leaders share the load. Leadership decisions can be made in many ways. Often, the situation determines which type of method a leader uses to make a decision. Some ways include: Decide and announce : the leader does all the work, makes the complete decision, and hopes that everyone follows. This method is useful in a crisis (like a fire fighter captain at a fully involved blaze) and less useful in other situations (for example, picking an organizational strategy for next year). Consult and then decide : the leader talks to key people, gather information, and makes the decision. Sometimes that decision is close to what others have recommended, and sometimes it isn't. This method is useful when the decision is complicated and technical in an area where the leader has authority but not all of the expertise. The method fails if the leader consults the wrong people or disregards all advice without ever explaining the rationale for the f...

Enjoy Your Stories Developing

Have you ever noticed that something tough you once lived through, perhaps endured with some hardship, can much later become an amusing story, even a funny one? It reminds me of a quote from one of my favorite people, a famous story teller, entertainer, musician, and comedian - Steve Allen. He said: Tragedy plus time equals comedy. (the quote has often been attribute to other people, but I'm on a bit of a mission to clarify attribution whenever possible and I'm fairly certain Mr. Allen was the first to say it. Here's the whole account, from an excellent source for clarifying attribution): When I explained to a friend recently that the subject matter of most comedy is tragic (drunkenness, overweight, financial problems, accidents, etc.) he said, “Do you mean to tell me that the dreadful events of the day are a fit subject for humorous comment? The answer is “No, but they will be pretty soon.” Man jokes about the things that depress him, but he usually waits til...

High Performance Leaders Inspire

What if we lived like a teacher teaching the unknown, reaching the loved, and preaching possibility? What if we did our best to bring out the best in everyone we encountered? It may not be possible to do that all of the time, but it is certainly possible to do that more often. Let's do that more often! -- doug smith

To Stop Lying To Yourself

Do you tell the truth no matter what? It's only possible to tell the truth once you stop lying to yourself. Why would you ever lie to yourself? We do it all the time: little rationalizations to make us feel better. Sometimes we lie to ourselves about our intentions. For example, every time we say "I'll try to do that" we're lying to ourselves. Try is not a commitment. Trying is not doing. To avoid the rationalization, make the strong commitment that you will do something. You do know whether or not you can, so the commitment is all in your will. When else do we lie to ourselves? Sometimes our limiting beliefs lie to us about our capabilities. Rather than constantly testing ourselves, we may give in to the belief that a task or project is too big. In that way, our own lies (because it's never too big if you really aim to do it) stand in our way, paper barriers to our success that hold with the strength of concrete. It doesn't need to be like that....

Forget What You Know?

Does it ever make sense to forget what you know? What if what you know is certain and true? What if you simply believe it to be true, but beyond your knowledge it isn't true at all? Sometimes learning requires the suspension of what we think is true. We need to be able to entertain a contradiction or paradox long enough to find a new perspective. Maybe we will change our mind, maybe we won't, but we give it air time. We let it breathe. We expand our world of possibilities just long enough to see if we're missing something important. Creatives are constantly willing to forget what they think they know to learn something far more useful. Something far more magical. Something far more brilliant. And, possibly something far more true. Sometimes it happens. Sometimes it does not and we are free to hold to what we already believe. But without trying, without the willingness to suspend judgement for long enough to see anew -- how will we ever know? -- Douglas Brent...

Should Team Members Compete With Each Other?

How does inserting competition into your daily relationships effect those relationships? When I was very young I competed for places on sports teams. I had to be better skilled (or in some cases better connected) than other potential team members just to make the team. Once on the team, we were often pitted against each other in competition for the inner rewards of being on the team: playing regularly, getting positive feedback, getting the admiration of our peers in the crowd. But the cost was ever so high. Competing so strongly against other youth who played the same position, we did not help each other. Instead of making each other stronger and better prepared, we worked on our personal skills and hoped our own places were secure. They weren't. There is always someone better at what you do. If they are on the same team and do not help you, they may stay better than you but they are not as strong as they could be -- and of course, neither are you. Team member...

The Five Qualities of Successful Leaders

What makes a leader successful? There are many lists. Sometimes the lists go as high as 100 qualities. Sometimes they are fewer competencies but still too many to remember and too many to clearly assess on a personal basis. It's part of the difficulty of taking a 360 evaluation and making sense of it. I like Adam Bryant's approach of focusing on five key leadership traits. We can quibble about which five leadership traits matter the most, but this is a workable list. My own work has also identified five leadership traits that I believe clearly shows the strengths needed and how great leaders use their flexibility (or centeredness) to optimize their use of those strengths, even though we each vary in which strengths we use the most. It is built on the work of centuries of personality sorters and bears similarities to several prominent ones which focus on four traits. I see these four strengths as Clarity, Courage, Creativity and Compassion. The fifth s...

What You Need

Use what you've learned to become what you need. -- doug smith

Look for and Listen for True Feedback

Are you a fan of feedback? I once avoided it. Oh, I'd enjoy positive feedback as much as anyone. Truthfully, I loved it. But feedback for improvement? Or outright criticism? Yeah, go ahead and keep that to yourself. Even when I taught other people that feedback was a gift, the negative feedback could stay wrapped up as far as I was concerned. Then I realized that it's only feedback. It may or not be even true. It comes from one person's perspective and that is influenced by so many factors, much of it has absolutely nothing to do with me. But more important than that -- there are things about my performance I miss. There are things that I don't see, don't hear, don't feel but that other people do and that effects their experience. Since I want my customers, my clients, my learners to all have the best possible positive learning experience when they work with me, the constructive feedback really does help me to do more of what is needed and less of what i...

High Performance Leadership

Search This Blog