Why
You're Failing to Engage Customers
Most
companies face barriers that prevent them from fully engaging
customers and employees. Here are the five root causes
of those obstacles -- and how to overcome them.
All
companies strive to make the most of two key assets –
their customers and their employees. Yet organizations
unintentionally create barriers that prevent them from
fully engaging those two groups.
In
the first article of this two-part series, we outlined
the key characteristics of those barriers, as determined
by a Gallup study of barriers to engagement across several
industries in seven countries. This article explores the
root causes of these barriers and how to permanently remove
them to clear a path to greater customer and employee
engagement.
The five root causes
Gallup's study identified about 200 barriers and evaluated
the root causes of each. Surprisingly, virtually every
barrier identified could be traced back to one of five
primary causes, regardless of the industry, function,
or geography of the company.
The barriers were often obvious and seemingly intractable,
as they involved hundreds of variables and many job roles.
Understanding the key variables helps companies identify
the specific systems, structures, processes, and people
in the organization that must change to overcome the barriers.
And though the barriers can seem entrenched and complex,
the root causes are not.
Root cause 1: fear
The most prevalent root cause of barriers to engagement
is fear; at least one fear-based barrier existed in all
the companies Gallup studied. While it may seem surprising
that companies with rational, disciplined management would
be subject to self-inflicted damage due to fear, the data
indicate that it likely happens in all companies. Fear-based
barriers restrict employee and customer engagement in
several ways. Fear stifles innovation and creativity,
limits an organization's flexibility in meeting customer
requirements, prevents cross-functional collaboration
in addressing problems, discourages empowerment, and causes
turnover.
As companies
grow, they begin to introduce rules, policies, and procedures
that attempt to mitigate concern about loss -- loss of
control, respect, or certainty that employees will "do
the right thing." Checks and balances are required
in all businesses, but they can go too far. Examples of
institutional fear-based barriers include excessive scripting
of customer contacts and lack of frontline empowerment.
Managing institutional fear may sound daunting, but it
can be done. For example, the customer center of a financial
services company decided that rather than scripting its
customer center interactions, it would provide guidelines
to encourage customer service representatives (CSRs) to
use "value added phrases." The key is to establish
limits while allowing employees to take some risks to
meet customer or internal needs. Risks that succeed should
be rewarded; risks that fail, but are attempted within
the rules, should be treated as learning experiences rather
than as a cause for discipline.
The second source of fear in an organization is at the
individual level. Even when an organization is struggling,
some employees will find power and contentment in the
status quo. This leads them to resist change -- actively
or passively. Typically, fearful employees fall into three
categories:
• The reluctant gatekeepers: These employees tend
to derail progress or innovation. Often, they are influential
players who are more interested in protecting the "old
way" than in adapting to a changing environment.
• The
risk-averse: These workers are reluctant to challenge
inefficiencies or to propose change -- in the organization
or in their own department -- because they fear reprisal
or are concerned about how change might affect their role
or workload.
•
The "speed bumps": These employees aren't necessarily
in a position to directly influence thinking in the organization.
But they can, through lack of knowledge or motivation,
slow down the progress of groups tasked to investigate
challenges and enact change.
Managing individual
fear is more challenging because this type of fear can't
necessarily be conquered by modifications to process or
policy. The first step is to ferret out the organizational
factors leading to this fear.
For instance, change often inspires fear. One way to counteract
this is to improve communication about changes by clearly
establishing who is accountable for achieving strategic
outcomes. This helps managers and employees look past
the initial hardships of change (such as increased or
varying workload, or loss of power or valuable connections)
while focusing on the eventual benefits of success (such
as increased efficiency and productivity, improved customer
relations, or increased sales and incentive-based compensation).
Please
click here
to continue reading Why You're Failing to
Engage Customers.
Reprinted from The Gallup Management Journal |
Note
from Kevin
 Greetings!
Welcome to
part two of the two-part series on engaging internal and
external customers. I don’t know about you, but
I give so much credibility to these articles from Gallup
because everything they present is founded in solid research.
What that says to me is that it just makes sense to use
their research as guide posts for increasing employee
and customer engagement at all levels of the organization.
And remember, engagement is the most critical factor when
it comes to positioning your company for the challenges
of the next decade.
Of the 5 Root
Causes of disengagement I want to take a minute and share
some thoughts about two of them: fear and short-term focus.
This is in no way an attempt to diminish the other 3,
because all 5 are critical factors to engagement. I chose
these two because I find them to be the hardest for leaders
and managers to understand and improve.
Fear -- this
invasive cause of disengagement is very hard to put your
finger on and is often something that is felt rather than
seen in the workplace. I would also challenge you to consider
the idea that fear can be both positive and negative depending
on how it is managed. The positive side of fear is a normal
(and desired) part of the continuous improvement process;
it comes with change. The negative side of fear is created
when normally productive people in some way feel threatened.
It is my belief that the secret to managing fear is to
take the time to think through how people (whoever is
involved) will perceive the change and to know what they
need to feel comfortable with it. Don’t try to eliminate
fear but do everything you can to manage it.
Short term
focus -- sacrificing long term results for short term
gain may be one of the most preventable causes of disengagement
in organizations. Every time a decision is made as a “reaction”
to current conditions, you can expect a fairly heavy cost
down stream. I am also convinced that it’s a short
term focus that keeps organizations stuck in the whitewater
of daily crisis, anxiety and stress. The challenge I see
is that far too many people in leadership and management
positions are caught up at “hacking away in the
jungle” when they should be making sure the decisions
that are being made will drive sustainable results year
after year.
Yes,
there is a lesson in all of this! Both these causes of
disengagement can be managed by using the same concept:
PAUSE! Before you make a decision to change or do anything,
I urge you to PAUSE! You have control over the decisions
you make, and I challenge you to exercise that control.
Many
of you are great decision makers, but I also know many
of you don’t explore all the alternatives that come
with decisions. I’m asking you to do something different.
I’m asking you to discipline (read: habit) yourself
to PAUSE each time a decision has to be made and systematically
explore the alternatives. I guarantee life gets easier
and results improve when you take a moment to PAUSE.
Life
is good...
KW |
