The customer demands instant satisfaction or resolution of a situation with a company, that is a part of their expectations of good service. However, having people who can make those decisions is hard because many managers are afraid of allowing their people too much power because they have to answer for the actions of their employees to their bosses. This is what makes a manager want to have absolute control over each situation.
My favorite questons to ask managers is, "Can your employee cost the company any more money or make any bigger mistakes than you have ever made? How did you learn to make decisions?" Most of them will agree that the employee cannot do any worst than they can do. They also agree that the only way they learned to make good decisions was to make a mistake and learn from that mistake.
Decisions that do not get the results we want are a normal part of the learning process. So why don't we do the same things with our employees that we did with ourselves, ie, coaching them in how to make better decisions. Well, this is a complicated issue because some employees are not capable of making these types of decisions, have the confidence to make those decisions or just do not want to have the authority to make those decisions. However, if we assume that it is an all or nothing situation, then the people who deserve and are capable of making good decisions get frustrated and end up not liking their job.
To discuss the issues of empowerment, I am going to use some analogies that will be helpful in classifying the different employees types and some of the challenges each type present.
The "Major Burns" syndrome - I chose this one from the popular movie and sitcom, M*A*S*H. Maj Burns was the guy who looked for any chance to be in charge when the Colonel was not around and ran things the army way - strict and disciplined. Well, we have people like that on the drive who like to go strictly by the book and are proud that they can say "no" to a customer with supporting documentation. They are not flexible and look at everything as black and white and do not understand when we bend the "rules".
Next we have the "Buck Passer". This is a person who does not want the responsibility of making decisions, even though the person has been trained to do so, asked to do so and is expected to do so. This person is afraid of being beat up by the manager or the customer and just wants to stay out of the cycle, and is very good at it. This type of employee always tells the customer that they are relaying the decison of the manager or store policy, without taking any personal responsibility for why. Let's say a service advisor at a car dealership has a customer who demands a loaner car. The advisora checks with the manager who says NO WAY! So the advisor returns to the customer and tells them that they need to see the manager.
Then there is the "Customer's Buddy", the employee customers always ask for because they know that person will give them anything they want, discounts, free services, whatever. This "Customer's Buddy" likes the prestige of being the customer's favorite, the one they always ask for. To this employee it is more important to have the customer like them, which means less customer hassels.
The sad part is that in any of these situations customers know that they can pursue this further if they do not like the decision presented to them., which opens another whole can of worms for the empowerment issue. What I mean is that the average customer knows that if they do not like the answer they get from the front line person they can go to another level, because the employees were just doing something their job. The problem is that customers know this works ruining the purpose of empowerment.
To help aleviate this problem, I suggest that an employee never make a decision concerning a customer without seeking counsel from their manager or at least informing the manager of what is happening and why they are handling it this way. In fact, in my workshops I tell employees that they do not want to have absolute empowerment. The reason this is so important is that sometimes a customer will indicate to the employeee acceptance of a decision and then immediately go directly to the manager screaming about the unfair treatment from the employee. When this happens, the manager is totally blindsided and has to make an emotional decision that may be totally different from what the employee did. As a result, the employee feels stabbed in the back by the manager and loses the desire to risk making decisions. So the next time a problem happens, the empolyee immediately sends the customer to the manager.
The customer hates this process because of the feeling of being bounced around by the company and having to do too much work to get the problem resolved. The customer also see a dysfunctional company that is not operating as a single unit. So a valuable lesson is learned by the customer, if I keep looking and complaining I will find someone who will give me what I want .
For this to work, the manager/company must support the decision of the front line person, then review what happened and decide if it needs to be done a little different next time or, more important, compliment that person on making a good decision. When a person is complimented, then the behavior is most likely to be repeated. If a different decision must be made for the customer, it is important to make sure the front line person is the hero, so there is no lose of relationship with the customer and the customer sees the employee has real authority.
It is important for the customer to see a unified company that is consistant and fair in its decision making process.
To make this work, I would suggest several other things to compliement keeping the manager informed when the employee is dealing with a situation outside of standard guidelines.
Create team decision making so they can make decisions as a group. To do this there must be regular meetings to discuss different situations that had questionable results.
Another thing to realize is that not everyone should be or wants to be empowered at the same level. It would probably be a good idea to have a team leader that would keep everyone organized and have a quick resource to assist the employee in assisting the customer.
Lastly, sometimes it is important NOT to always make a quick decision. Some situations need a little research to make a fair decision, but sometimes a fair decision may mean having to tell the customer "no" and making sure all the bases are covered if the customer decides to pursue it.
Copyright, 1996, J. Daniel Emmanuel
Business Workshops Presented by Daniel Emmanuel
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