Not long ago I was in a life and death struggle with a US Air ticketing kiosk in Orlando. I gave up and, in an ornery mood, explained my problem to the nearby ticket agent.
He smiled and said, "Dr. Weiss, let me show you why those machines will never replace me," and quickly straightened out the mess and had my wife and me on our way. I was quite impressed. Within an hour, I was on a US Air flight with indifferent service and a bored flight attendant. I was quite unimpressed.
I find these dichotomies every day in a wide variety of firms with which I deal: excellent auto service, but a hostile receptionist; terrible cable television scheduling people, but wonderful repair people; friendly cashiers, but filthy aisles in the store.
How difficult is it to shop your own business and find out who is doing the job the best and why? If a job is being done with mixed results within the same firm, the ability to raise everyone to the highest current level of performance is within reach and provides huge profit improvement potential. Yet I´ve seen two people behind a common ticket counter perform with very different degrees of customer service and success, all within sight of anyone who cares to look.
How many organizations have their human resources people run an internal best practices operation wherein they or people they hire for the purpose compare internal performance in similar jobs? Years ago, in a consulting assignment, we helped improve Mercedes' customer service and sales experience by using the best Mercedes dealerships as the standards for the rest. After all, we knew that the best standards of service were attainable because they were being met by existing dealerships, so moving everyone up to that level was a great start.
Why aren´t you demanding that the habits, behaviors, experiences, training, and nurturing of the best performers at every position be copied, emulated, and reinforced for everyone performing in those jobs? I´m aghast that I can take two consecutive fights on the same airline and encounter great service and horrible service from flight attendants doing identical jobs; conduct my banking with two different tellers, one of whom truly appreciates my business and one of whom seems to resent my intrusion; or call two different claims representatives at the same insurer and find one determined to help me and another determined to move me to someone else´s phone extension.
If you can´t raise your performance to a common level of excellence within your own operation, how can you ever be "world class"? And if you aren´t engaged in this pragmatic, important activity in HR, how can you ever claim to be of importance to the organization?
Alan Weiss, Ph.D. is the author of 25 books, including Million Dollar Consulting (McGraw-Hill), which appear in 7 languages. He runs the unique Million Dollar ConsultingTM Colleges three times a year. You can reach him at http://www.summitconsulting.com, where you can also download hundreds of free articles. He was recently inducted into the Professional Speakers Hall of Fame. ®
© Alan Weiss 2006 All rights reserved.
