Customer Zealotry, Part 2: The Drive to Serve Also Heals

28 Mar
2013

Behavior Engineering

In a previous post, we looked at how a client company worked to build customer zealotry by creating an atmosphere that encouraged caring and honesty between the company's managers and owners of the stores they managed. They came together to not just satisfy, but to thrill, customers – and drive real financial results.
But our client also came to realize that having customer zealotry as a collective goal was also a catalyst for healing rifts between groups at the retail stores who, not coincidentally, usually communicated with different internal divisions of the company whose interactions had historically been antagonistic at best.
Find a Way to Help, Find a Way to Care
In our work, we've found that tackling soured relationships begins with finding a way to help, finding a way to care. With personal storytelling to create an initial basis for trust and by having the district managers emphasize that a lot was riding on the collective success of the team, we set out to help the conflicting groups co-create ways to improve the customer experience and, thus, the business results of each store. It could only work if people were motivated to work with, and not against, each other.
As soon as the dialogue opened it became clear that groups that needed to cooperate were not seeing “eye to eye.” At one store, two departments that were literally next door to each other "hated each other … and it showed in [their] customer service," reported one district manager. The problem was widespread, and it showed in abysmal Yelp ratings and other indicators of subpar customer experience across the universe of franchised stores.
Interviewing to Understand the Other Groups' View
At another storefront faced with similar conflict, we encouraged one district manager to try something that became a best practice. He brought employees together and inspired them to think not just about their own desk, their own problems, their own direct reports, their own customers – but to understand how the sum of everyone's actions rippled out to affect the experience of all who worked there and, consequently, how it impacted their customers. Department managers were asked to interview other groups' employees. Questions like "Why do you come to work?" and "How do your decisions affect others?" began to open up communication channels, resulting in acknowledgement of past relationship problems and creating greater empathy among workers and between the groups.
The method moved the needle in the right direction, said one sales manager who participated in the cross-group interviews. "After many employee interviews and manager meetings, something started to change. Slowly, the managers began to talk more and openly share goals. What was once a room full of adversaries became a team. We got the rusted flywheel to unlock and move slightly. A team was formed and a movement begun."
This new spirit of collaboration – in that location and many others across storefronts nationwide – made it easier for individuals and teams to think big. The collaborative "we" became more robust, the power of working together was celebrated and the more bonded teams, with a little bit of coaching, agreed that it made sense to aim high. They wouldn't just try to please customers; they would gain a reputation for the best customer service in the region. Teams began to share their best practices and look for areas of synchronicity, where one group's resources could help another.
Teams also began to challenge each other. "In my last team meeting,” said one manager, “I put my resume up on the screen and made my teammates write theirs. They asked why. I said, 'Because if you don’t think you are good enough to work somewhere else, then you are not good enough to work here, so let’s get your resume done.’”
Building Personal Relationships
The need to boost customer zealotry also served as a justification for managers and stores to “lean in” and build intimacy. Another manager established a best practice when he made it a personal policy to regularly reach out to his store owners at random to get to know them as people. He shared good company news or some tidbit of information he knew would interest them personally, as a friend. If he was driving around and one of them came to mind, he got on his cell phone and called them – just to say hello and ask them how things were going and whether there was anything he could do to help.
These quick informal check-ins made all the difference. Once, he happened to call an owner on the day that owner's first grandson was born, which allowed him to offer congratulations and send gifts. That simple act permanently and radically changed the tone and context for all their future business discussions. Regular, open communications offered in a spirit of generosity and with no particular business agenda made tough conversations about sales projection shortfalls far less confrontational. Even those conversations tended to focus quite naturally on how the manager could help and what the now-cooperating groups at the owner's store could do differently.
Word spread quickly when colleagues heard of this manager’s success, and they, too, began reaching out – drawing up lists of people at the stores including but not limited to the owners to call and thank. That collaboration among the district managers even extended to writing up scripts for the shy or easily tongue-tied.
Better Relationships With Customers, Too
The synergy is clear: Efforts to serve the customer were repairing relationships long strained by the “old ways” of doing things, and that was making things better for customers. "Our relationship has definitely improved,” said one store owner of the managers that stop by his storefront. “We’re getting to know each other. And I’m sure I’m in turn convincing them, both with my actions and our improved customer experience results, that I definitely have their best interests at heart."