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Overcoming The Challenges Of Doing More With Less By Hiring the Right People and Developing Them
If I had a nickel for every time I heard a Manager or General Manager say they were running “lean and mean” I would have… well, I would have a lot of nickels. The spirit of the statement is certainly appropriate—operating efficiently and without waste is always a good idea. However, simply reducing the quantity of your staff is frequently a recipe for poor employee and customer experiences.
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Building Your Business and Your Brand by Thinking Outside of the Box
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Issue 4, June 2009 |
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Overcoming The Challenges Of Doing More With Less By Hiring the Right People and Developing Them
by: Dr. David Hyatt, President and Partner
If I had a nickel for every time I heard a Manager or General Manager say they were running “lean and mean” I would have… well, I would have a lot of nickels. The spirit of the statement is certainly appropriate—operating efficiently and without waste is always a good idea. However, simply reducing the quantity of your staff is frequently a recipe for poor employee and customer experiences. While the current economic situation is requiring all of us to “do more with less,” it is impossible to actually achieve more with less unless the people being asked to do more are actually capable of doing “more.” There are two components to ensuring that your team has the ability to do what you need: selection and development. Selection of a quality team ensures you have the right ingredients with which to craft a compelling customer experience while development ensures that your “ingredients” mature to achieve their full potential and are able to consistently deliver your intended customer experience. The important thing to remember is that neither of these critical processes just “happen.” Rather, it is important to consider the customer experience you want to create and then to select people who have the ability to consistently deliver it. Further, it is crucial to have a development strategy for your people that consistently encourages them to develop their skills in support of the desired customer experience. Clearly, all of this requires planning ahead with a vision of your intended customer experience firmly in mind. The following articles will give you an idea of important elements to consider while developing your selection and development strategies.
During Tough Times, Hire For What Matters Most: Your Customer Experience
The importance of selecting the right employees during lean times and how it will improve customer loyalty through a compelling customer experience.
by: Dr. Thomas DeCotiis, Founder and CEO
When the going gets tough, the tough often hire warm bodies. After all, in many industries, being fully staffed is a crucial determinant of a company’s success. Customers will not tolerate being underserved simply because you are understaffed. Still, it is not just being fully staffed that matters; it is being fully staffed with the right kind of people. That is, people who will consistently deliver a compelling and differentiating experience to your customers, especially during challenging economic times. During such times, customers typically show far more discretion in how they spend their hard-earned money. Hiring the right kind of people will best enable you to earn their business and keep it.
Being a sought-after company demands far more than warm bodies; it demands employees who show up and enthusiastically do their jobs. Keep in mind, when hiring, “what” comes before “who.” Many managers think they are simply hiring people, but that is only part of the process. The “what” of hiring is simple and profound: What you are hiring is your customer experience. This fact is especially important during times of economic stress, when one of the most noticeable sources of competitive differentiation is your employees. That’s because employees are the faces, hearts, and hands of your brand. When you use an effective employee hiring process, you are significantly increasing the chances that your customers will have an experience that you intend for them and, equally important, that they will return.
Solid hiring assessments (e.g., pre-employment tests) change the odds of a successful hire in dramatic ways. First, using tailored hiring tools increases the chances that your new hires will deliver your intended customer experience. Second, such tools increase the chances that your new hires will stay and fit with your company’s values (especially those impacting your customers). When you hire employees who share your values, they are far more likely to create memorable and compelling experiences for your customers.
More Than Just Lip Service: Focus On Employee Development Brings The Customer Experience To Life
by: Dr. Leanne Buehler, Lead Product Manager Many organizations emphasize the importance of the customer experience to the success of the business. While this sounds great, the next question is, what is the organization doing to ensure a memorable customer experience is delivered every time? If you tell employees that outstanding customer service is essential, what are you doing to support them?
One way to bring a great customer experience to life is to start by hiring service-minded employees who have a natural passion for taking care of others. However, this will only get you so far. It is also essential to create an environment that supports the delivery of great service. In other words, if you hire service-focused employees and then bring them into an environment where great service is not encouraged, supported, or rewarded, they will quickly move on to an organization where their skills are allowed to shine. Stellar employees won’t stick around for long once they realize they are not working in an equally stellar environment.
One way to ensure you are creating an environment that is supportive of great customer service is by focusing on employee feedback and development. To do so, provide employees with regular feedback on what they are good at and where they need to improve (development assessments are helpful tools that can be used to provide such feedback). Next, help employees create a development plan to leverage their strengths and improve in opportunity areas. Provide the tools they need to work the plan and regularly monitor progress. Be sure to reward employees for their efforts and successes.
Focusing on employee development is valuable to both the individual and the organization. Employees will feel valued and supported so they stick around and their performance improves. For example, in a study with a large multi-unit restaurant company, employees who felt that their manager encouraged their development were two times more likely to feel an intense desire to please customers compared to employees who did not have a supportive manager. The bottom-line? A focus on employee development as a means to enhancing the customer experience gives true credibility to the promises you make to your employees and customers, which ultimately benefits the growth and profitably of the organization.
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Visit Corvirtus on the web:
www.Corvirtus.com
www.PFRondemand.com
Spotlight on:
Houlihan's
Restaurant & Bar
www.houlihans.com
Houlihan’s Restaurants, which opened its first location in 1972, is a veteran in casual American dining. Even with the years of experience in the casual dining industry, this forward-thinking company knew that if it didn’t look for new ways to constantly improve the customer experience, it would look the same in a sea of competition. This prompted a repositioning of the Houlihan’s brand, with a focus on creating an environment where customers could affordably nosh on stylish (and more importantly, tasty) appetizers and sip on creative cocktails while watching the behind-the-scenes happenings up-close. Their vision of creating a new ‘hip-casual’ space for the 21st Century consumer has definitely provided a breath of fresh air to the casual dining scene.
Corvirtus and Houlihan’s Restaurants have recently partnered to develop hourly selection tools designed to find the right candidates that represent Houlihan’s modern style while assuring each customer receives top-notch service. Through our partnership, we have been able to define the experience Houlihan’s wants to deliver to its customers and have developed assessments that will find those people who will consistently provide great service and the personality that truly represents their brand.
Whitepaper Download
Genuine Service Passion:
What is it? Who has it? Why Your Business Needs It!
Find out why employees who possess high levels of GSP are remarkably different than those who don't have it. GSP is an important link to your customer experience and can affect your company's bottom line.
CLICK HERE
to download this whitepaper.
Corvirtus Webinar
Customer Satisfaction is Critical - Make Sure the Right Talent is Engaging with Customers
Thursday, June 4, 2009
11:00 a.m. PT / 2:00 p.m. ET
In this complimentary one-hour webcast, you'll learn and discover through demonstration how you can attract, assess, recruit, and hire the talent you want engaging with your customers.
To register for this webinar
CLICK HERE
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