I spend a good portion of my working week looking at our clients’ data and thinking of new and original ways to tell them how to listen to the voice of the customer. A big part of how our clients subsequently go away with these ideas and transform their business around them has to do with the extent to which they engage with their front-end staff. After all employee engagement drives customer engagement.Teenagers are disengaged from many things; bill paying, social graces and hygiene come without thinking. But what suddenly occurred to me as I popped down to my local supermarket to do my shopping last weekend was how my hugely variable customer experiences in supermarkets past & present may well be explained by the employment contract behind the fresh-faced member of staff at the counter.
Example - I had a 15-minute conversation in Waitrose three weeks ago with a lovely man who was perfectly comfortable with the idea of picking me out a peachy number from the wine section that he said would perfectly compliment my pea and pancetta risotto. That’s just great customer service; having a guy who knows his job and knows his products is really fantastic. Juxtapose that with my experience Saturday gone with a different retailer when my question as to the whereabouts of the chocolate fingers was met with as vacant a 5-second stare as one could ever expect to receive and it clicked – it’s all about engagement.
Sadly I didn’t catch the name of my local wine expert three weeks ago, but as a token of my satisfaction with the peachy Viognier, let’s call him Oz. Similarly I didn’t use those empty 5-seconds to look at the teenager’s name badge on Saturday, but in honour of his teenage persona, let’s call him Kevin.
Oz probably loves his job – serving the public is something he’s done for years and he’s more than happy to listen to and try to understand his store and area managers as they try to convey the idea of customer centricity and what can be done better to improve the customer experience. Kevin was probably recovering from a heavy night at Fabric, suffering withdrawal at his third consecutive hour away from Facebook and thinking about that bronzed Spanish exchange student from lectures.Trivialities aside, I don’t think this is a coincidence. Are companies who are trying to improve their customer service but employing lots of younger people on cheap wages and part-time or weekend contracts ultimately fighting a losing battle? Is employee engagement a pipe dream in this space?
Andrew Robson