To begin, they point that every employee-customer interaction "is a change for something to go wrong" (p.17). Further, why would a business "trust its employees enough to put them toe-to-toe with its most valuable assets--its customers--every day, but not trust them enough to allow them to make independent decisions that might enable them to serve their customers more effectively" (P. 18)?
In light of this observation, they constructed a notion of HumanSigma whose key principles are:
- Rule 1: You cannot measure and manage employee and customer experiences as separate entities.
- Rule 2: Emotion frames the employee-customer encounter.
- Rule 3: You must measure and manage the employee-customer encounter at a local level.
- Rule 4: We can quantify and summarize the effectiveness of the employee-customer encounter in a single performance measure--the HumanSigna metric--that is powerfully related to financial performance.
- Rule 5: Improvement in local HumanSigma performance requires deliberate and active intervention through attention to a combination of transactional and transformational intervention activities--how companies implement action plans and training, as well as select employees and managers, compensate and evaluate employees, implement succession planning, etc.
This notion again illustrates centrality of people to organizational success, and the inter-relationship between organizational trust and value of employees, a talent management organizational culture, the "right people in the right job," and a respectful and empowering manager.
How can managers who have to lead and supervise at a distance engage with their employees in such a manner? How can employees be enabled to thoughtfully (being well informed) and prudently make decisions on their own, as needed?
Chuck Piazza
9 comments:
It seems very negative to begin by asserting that "every employee-employer interaction is a change for something to go wrong." This is very negative and certainily doesn't speak well of either the employee or the client. If you've hired the right people, you could safely assert that every interaction is a chance for clients to see/feel/experience the great service we espouse. It is baffling as well that employees are trusted to even speak to clients when often we are treated as if we have no competance at all. Again, hire the right talent in the right position that utilizes a person's best about them and do this throught out the organization. It sounds so simple and maybe it is and maybe that's why it's so hard. This becomes more critical as workforces are spread globally. We must discern when to use email and messaging, and when to get on the phone or communicate in person. It takes alot of trust to allow employees to work independently and make decisions as needed to satisy a customer. Peer advice and/or peer/group decision making would be helpful (even peopel at the very top cannot operate in a vacuum), along with thiring right talent.
Human sigma is human driven. Other theories such as Six Sigma and TQM focus on quantitative figures that are measurable which in turn results in the creation of action plans for improvement, strategic planning and other leadership decision for an organization. Human Sigma is a concept that puts value on the individual. The interaction, actions and reactions of humans yield positive or negative outcomes which affect organizational objectives including most importantly profitability.
Utilizing the concepts of Human Sigma I believe at a distance is a management challenge and objective that is attainable. Valuing the employee, including the employee in company plans and training for success are human resource elements that validate the concept of Human Sigma. Humans are emotional and reactive. Managing the internal customer with the same detail and care as the external customer will results in positive and profitable outcomes.
Valuing and empowering the internal customer will results in employee engagement which yields prudent decision making. Employee that feels appreciated empowered to live the mission and vision of the company will make independent decisions that affect the company objectives in positive ways.
I find the posting by chuck and other students very interesting that by utilizing the concept of human sigma managers at a distance can value the employees, practice talent management, and put right people in the right job. Managing people is not easy but managing remote people is much more difficult. Managers will be faced with many challenges as organizations use virtual teams to get the job done. Managers at distance can value the employees, practice talent management, and put right people in the right job by following ways:
• Creating strategies to help new members adjust to the team environment. Due to the nature of such an environment, new members need to be well informed and oriented about the expectancy of each member in delivering a successful project.
• Keeping the pace of the team's virtual environment. It is important to keep everyone informed of progress, whether it is by e-mail or phone calls.
• Developing strategies to keep the team focus. Since teammates do not see each other on a regular basis, project managers find it challenging to ensure that team members feel connected to the bigger picture.
• Identifying the role of each team member. Managers must ensure that everyone is on the same page and understands his or her role and responsibility.
• Total Quality Management has a customer-first orientation. The customer, not internal activities and constraints, comes first. The managers should believe that the company will only be successful if customers are satisfied. Total quality management starts at the management level, but it will not work if employees are not appropriately trained. It all starts with the training process. Having good employees working on teams will help the overall quality.
• From the top level management to the lower level, they should give importance to the employees who contributed the company's success. Employees are said to be the asset of the company. Specifically, role ambiguity emerges as the most influential variable in the employee-role interface, and employee adaptability is a highly determining factor for the delivery of effective role-prescribed and extra-role performances.
Employees can be enabled to thoughtfully (being well informed) and prudently make decisions on their own, as needed. Employees have a hugely significant influence on customers and will ultimately determine the scope of business operations. They provide crucial contributions both directly and indirectly through word-of-mouth, service quality, customer loyalty and critical incidents, which, when effective, generate organizational profits.
Word of Mouth
Word-of-Mouth communication between existing customers and potential customers can be significantly influenced by service employees. Positive word-of-mouth communication can be defined as “all informal communications between customers and others concerning evaluations of goods or services”. Word-of –mouth is more influential in attracting new customers in the service based industry, because consumers perceive Word-of-Mouth communication as a more reliable source of information. It is this widely held perception that results in WOM having a far stronger ability to influence consumers than any marketing campaign. WOM is important in attracting new customers, and that the employees of a service organization do in fact determine the level of satisfaction and ultimately positive WOM.
Service Quality
Service quality is a major keystone for companies, especially in the services sector. An employee provides an organization ‘added value’ to their brand through smooth service delivery in meeting and exceeding customer expectations. The quality of service provision becomes the basis of the customer’s relationship with a company, hence, a vital function for employees. The quality of a service is often the only differentiating factor between companies in the eyes of consumer. This quality can then be rendered into increased customer loyalty, organizational growth, profitability, and shareholder value. The impact of service quality is a direct driver of customer satisfaction; a goal that all organizations strive for.
Customer Loyalty
The consumer experience in a service encounter is absolutely critical to the prolonged success of an organization. Through the delivery of a superior service, a company can create a sustainable competitive advantage, and as a result, establish the roots of customer loyalty. Such loyalty is the direct outcome of personal interactions between employees and customers. The customer satisfaction is the key driver of loyalty and other customer influences. Employee action is the dominant source of this satisfaction and subsequent loyalty.
Harpreet kaur
Treating your employee as an extension of yourself is an important piece to making sure your vision for the company is clearly communicated to your customer. I like where you said "you cannot separate the employee from the customer experience". This is why investing in training your employee is vital to not only keeping the employee happy, satisfied, and engaged, but to also achieve delivery of your best service through your employee's training.
It would be great if the human resource departments of all businesses are 100% accurate when they have to hire their employees for their open positions, avoiding friction to find and fit a worker in the right job. However, we know that is impossible to achieve. That’s why businesses try to homogenize worker behavior for client service. But it is still a bad practice because workers are dehumanized, falling into pattern behaviors, and consequently in a monotonous routine which leads to disengagement.
In order for managers to engage their workforce, they need to work from the top to the bottom expanding the business policies through all the employees. The top manager directs/teaches to his/her subordinate managers, and those subordinate managers direct/teach to his/her other subordinates, and so on. In this way every manager is responsible for a sector of the business and policy information is distributed cohesively at all levels. The problem is to see how effective the managers are delivering engaging speeches to their workforce. In this case, this is the job of human resources, to find the right managers for the key positions. I believe that freedom of action in the workforce is more open to engaging with clients than a mass of submissive employees that have to repeat what they are supposed to say to every single customer.
All this can succeed, if the right training is taught to all employees. However, as I said at the beginning, it is hard to expect from workers the same level of enthusiasm at training time, and at the time of interaction with the clients. The ones who do not fit the policies of the company must be put aside, and the formation of people with the capability to interact successfully with customers would be selected, little by little forming the ideal workforce.
Through constant communication management can lead and supervise at a disatnce. First, by training the employee to do their job to the utmost of their ability and by empowering the employee to provide a level of customer service that makes the customer want to come back for more. Second, rely on the employee to do what is right. Expressing to the employee that they are able to solve/resolve issues up to $500 without superviser approval. By bringing the front line employee into the solution as allowing tehm to resolve the problem it becomes a win win environment.
Employees who are well-trained and managed initially must be allowed to do their job. As a manager you must select and train staff to perform and work independently and confidentially. Supervision should be at a comfortable distance where employees can be evaluated and be offered guidance. I agree that customer satisfaction should be an essential role of employees and should be measured together as a whole.
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