Don O'Connor  

I have recently launched into a new career, professional speaker and consultant. To assist me with this new endeavor I have secured the services of Cathleen Fillmore, president of Speakers Gold, a successful speakers bureau. (http://www.speakersgold.com/) I completed a fifty question assessment of my abilities, qualifications, experiences, and so on. Based on the answers, and a lengthy discussion, Cathleen suggested that I could develop a marketing plan for businesses revolving around customer service and all its issues. Businesses needed a new approach and I was going to provide it. In essence, I was to "shake up the old paradigms."

I once worked for a big box hardware retailer for several years, both as an associate and department manager. At first, I felt I was a perfect fit for their corporate culture. Employees were respected, well paid, and regularly trained. Customers were happy with the service the employees provided. Then, economic times got tough and that changed the company landscape. The corporation, to save money and keep investors satisfied, reduced store staff, eliminated cherished employee incentives, shortened work schedules, as well as, shrinking store inventories. The result? Employee morale tanked as did customer service.

The company, in response to poor customer service ratings, implemented new measurements to study service effectiveness. For an accurate picture of such measures I suggest you read Fred Van Bennekom's article Measuring Service Effectiveness in the May 08 issue of SSPA News:
http://www.thesspa.com/sspanews/May08/article3.asp. So, the corporation went down this road of measuring every aspect of customer contact in search of the answer to, what happened to customer service?

Daniel Wentland, in his Ivey Business Journal article Strategic Training Always Puts Employees First
http://www.iveybusinessjournal.com/article.asp?intArticle_ID=703 clearly states,
"Quality employees equate to organizational success...Highly qualified employees produce quality products and provide quality service that satisfies consumer needs." In other words, happy employees provide better customer service. To realize the depth of such a claim one only has to look at a company like WestJet.

In Corporate Training Magazine a July/August 2006 article by Susan Bremner, The People Factor, clearly outlines the airline's formula for success. "Even WestJet's organizational structure is indicative of its employee-first approach. Whereas other companies consider employees as resources to be managed by HR, WestJet looks beyond this traditional perspective. To WestJet, the airline's fleet of planes are its resources; its employees are seen and treated as individuals." Fact: 90 percent of WestJet employees are shareholders.

So, what happened at my big box store? Why did the culture fail? Why was a successful formula allowed to fail? They know the solution, but change is often resisted. However, to be successful once again, perhaps resistance is futile.

by Don O'Connor