I recently noticed a headline that suggested companies should focus more on what employees want than what customers want. That might be understandable in a post-pandemic era where employees have become scarce, and companies find themselves understaffed and in competition for employees in a reduced workforce. But it also reminded me how business culture had changed from the heyday of customer service.
Traditionally, the United States has been known for good customer service, better than that found in many other countries. I still remember my shopping encounters with surly French staff in stores from Paris to Monte Carlo. And I recall reading a story about German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s amazement when she — having just been liberated by the fall of the Berlin Wall as the ’80s turned into the ’90s — encountered the common American phrase, “Have a nice day!” in an American grocery store. No one in communist East Germany had ever told her to have a nice day.
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A few years before Merkel encountered that friendly greeting in a store, American business had been under the spell of a number of popular books on a phenomenon called “Total Quality Management.” I worked in management at a large corporation around that time, where those books were required reading. Customer surveys became common, as was competitor research, and companies aimed to give the customers what they wanted.
But that recent headline about employee focus may be more representative of the business world today. Anyone who has shopped during the long pandemic period must have noticed that it is more than the supply chain that has broken down. Customer service has disappeared, and with it the slogans, “The customer is always right” and “Give the customers what they want.”
For example, I recently called a small-business owner merely to inquire about when a particular food item would be back, since the employees did not know and seemed indifferent about it. Three calls over a week, with messages left, resulted in no returned call from that store owner.
Some larger companies have baffled even their staff with the removal of popular items. And we have all experienced those long hold times and disconnects on the phone just to ask a question at some large corporation. Even some medical offices have become unpleasant to visit, with long waits, authoritarian COVID-related instructions outlined in e-mails, and indifference to complaints of being treated rudely by staff.
Of course, there are still managers, professionals and staff who are courteous and understand the concept of customer service, but they are notable for their rarity compared to our better customer service past. Yes, the employees’ needs must be met, but so must customers’ needs. (Of course, that is not a pass for customers to be rude themselves.)
Customers after all, have choices where to take their business. Often, they are telling the business what they want, if only the businesses would listen. If a longtime deli customer, for example, keeps asking for a certain item such as a chicken sandwich on white day after day, that should be an obvious clue to have more chicken sandwiches on white in the cooler. But we have probably all encountered shopping situations where the store did not listen to the customer, and instead, may have even further alienated the customer by being rude to them. After repeated episodes of this, that customer is gone.
So, yes, employers should listen to their employees. But they should also listen to their customers, and bring back a customer service culture. If a customer service culture can return, businesses and their employees will be the beneficiaries as much as the customers.