A Customer Culture is Built on a Service Ethic
The root cause of poor or just mediocre customer service goes deeper. It has to do with will..
Rank is an appointed position. Authority is an earned condition.
Rank is decreed from above. Authority is conferred from below.
Authority vanishes the moment those who bestow it stop
believing, respecting, or trusting their appointed boss, though
they may defer out of fear." — Ted Levitt, Thinking About
Management
There are many reasons why teams and organizations haven't
developed a culture of intense focus on their customers and
partners.
Some are management issues — they don't have the right tools and techniques or they haven't established disciplined listening and response systems and processes.
In these cases, managers don't know how to become more
customer and partner-focused. They don't have the way.
But the root cause of poor or just mediocre customer service
goes deeper. It has to do with will.
Most managers don't focus on their customers and
internal/external partners because they're too busy managing.
They've become Technomanagers focused first on technology and
management systems.
Technomanagers don't want to serve, they want to control. They
lord over and boss people. Technomanagers act as if (their words
may say something very different) people (customers, partners,
and everyone in their organization) serve their technology and
management systems.
Psychologist and Forbes columnist, Srully Blotnick, spent
twenty-seven years following the lives of 6,981 men. In his
book, Ambitious Men: Their Drives, Dreams, and Delusions, he
writes, "It's difficult to say to someone, 'I am your humble
servant,' and in the next breath hit them with, 'but I am also
your social superior'... 45 percent of all the ambitious and
talented men we studied who failed did so because of
difficulties directly connected with the simultaneous pursuit of
these two goals."
Effective leaders know that without disciplined management
systems and leading edge technologies, outstanding service is
nothing but a dream. But they act on a belief system that
management systems and technology exist to serve people. This is
an extension of the effective leader's personal purpose built
around the key service principle that success comes through
serving others.
Servant Leadership
"I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know;
the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who
will have sought and found how to serve." — Albert Schweitzer
In 1977, retired AT&T Director of Management Research, Robert
Greenleaf, published a philosophical leadership book that's
enjoying a resurgence because the world-leading retailer
Wal-Mart has used his concepts so effectively in building their
service culture. His book is called Servant Leadership: A
Journey Into Legitimate Power and Greatness. It's an inspiring
and insightful book that points the way toward the involvement
and empowerment movements we've seen in the last few years.
Greenleaf writes, "a new morale principle is emerging which
holds that the only authority deserving one's allegiance is that
which is freely and knowingly granted by the led to the leader
in response to, and in proportion to, the clearly evident
servant stature of the leader...the servant-leader is servant
first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to
serve, to serve first (his emphasis). Then conscious choice
brings one to aspire to lead."
It's another powerful paradox to be managed. On the one hand,
leaders provide direction. They guide, influence, and persuade
people on their team and throughout their organization. But once
the cultural Context and Focus (vision, values, and mission) is
clear, leaders continuously ask customers, external partners,
and their internal partners how they can harness and improve the
organization's core technologies, processes, and systems to meet
everyone's needs.
Then they put themselves in the management harness to establish goals and priorities along with the transformation and improvement plans that work to close the gaps between what is wanted and what is delivered.
About the Author
