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Featured Article
This month our featured article is written by John Tschohl.
Is Empowerment Dead?
As I travel around the world rarely do I ever see ANY employees using empowerment. Frankly, I think empowerment is non-existent.
It is very difficult to get employees to make fast decisions in favor of a customer. They are very skilled at saying NO. The fear of getting fired or criticized is so great that it is impossible to find employees making decisions on the spot in favor of the customer. However, without empowerment you will never be a service leader.
Companies spend a fortune on marketing- Often millions of dollars a month. Over half of the advertising expense is wasted. When you have a live customer on the phone, in person or over the Internet, why not use marketing money to keep him/her happy and create positive word-of-mouth advertising. What is the worst thing that can happen? You might have an overly happy customer. If you get thousands and possibly millions of overly happy customers you will have more growth, revenue and profit than you ever dreamed possible.
I have never met a CEO who disagreed with my concept of empowerment- which is: "Every employee must make fast decisions on the spot to take care of a customer to the customer’s satisfaction. If the customer wins your firms wins."
You will never be a service leader without empowerment. There are too many crazy things that happen each day. The employee is on the front line. Make sure they are empowered to make quick decisions in favor of the customer. If the customer loses, your organization loses.
Word of mouth advertising is 100 times cheaper than paid advertising and far more credible and believable. Empowered employees will help you create "customer experiences" your competitors will rarely achieve. Remember, good service is nice but will never create the marketing “spin” you want and need. Only awesome service, empowerment and service recovery will elevate you to a service leader. When your employees use empowerment, celebrate it. Put it in your internal publications. Make a big deal out of the employee breaking the rules and taking care of the customer. Provide lots of recognition. Never terminate, threaten or criticize employees for making empowered decisions- as long as the customer wins. All you need is one low level supervisor to scare an employee and empowerment will disappear in seconds.
Train all employees on customer service and empowerment. Most employees don't realize how critical customers are to your very existence. No one ever got fired for following the rules. When you tell a customer "I am sorry, but we have a policy." it is like putting gasoline on a fire.
Empowerment is lacking in every country in the world. There is a perception that the US is better. I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen a person, even in the U.S. use empowerment recently. Empowerment is the most critical skill necessary to be a service leader and the hardest skill to get employees to master. Without it you will never be a service leader.
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