So, You Don't Have Time For Training?
A friend of mine, the COO of a financial institution, was in Philadelphia on business the other day. He'd had a long day of meetings and was too tired to search out a restaurant, so he went down to the restaurant in his suite-style hotel for dinner. On his way to the dining room he encountered a young lady, who looked like she worked in the hotel, in the hallway. He said a pleasant "good evening" and proceeded to the dining room where he found an empty podium at the entrance. After standing there for several minutes without assistance he peeked back out into the hall and asked the young lady if there she knew whether or not there was a host available in the dining room.
Turns out she was the host, so she came into the dining room and escorted him to a table. The table was in full view of the bar where he observed the following scenario. A young man at the bar asked for a Merlot, the bartender asked her counterpart if there were any open bottles. She was directed to a corked bottle nestled into a corner. She took it out and asked out loud but perhaps hypothetically, "Is this still good?" She poured a little into a glass, tasted it, decided it was okay, and then proceeded to pour the rest of the glass to give to her patron. And this is just the beginning of the story.
My friend, in charge of customer service for his company, was more than amused, he was beside himself. He spent the rest of his two-hour dining experience observing a crew of young people, obviously untrained, unsupervised, unconcerned, and unaware about their guests halfheartedly attempting to do their jobs. Being a process-oriented type of guy, it started him thinking about the many parts of the process that were obviously omitted in the hiring, training and supervision of the young crew of workers at this establishment. Obviously someone had forgotten to impress on them what their real jobs were - making sure the customer was safe, happy, attended to and valued. Obviously the orientation program and training program at this hotel did very little good (if indeed they had one) in helping people feel good about their work and their customers. How sad it is that the hotel did not value its customers enough to make sure they were in good hands.
The dinner may have been mediocre, but the learning experience profound. He went back to his office thinking about how good his people were doing in making the customer feel important, cared for and valued, and he vowed to check on the progress of their training programs to make sure that people were learning the right lessons.
He got more than food - he got food for thought. Why not use your next experience as a customer as a learning experience for your organization? Do a "field trip" tomorrow and observe from afar what customer care looks like and what it doesn't look like. Then rush back to the office and share your findings. Happy hunting.
