Time to read – 45 seconds
WE have just been away for a week in the Lake District. Very relaxing very beautiful and some time spent with our lovely son.
We enjoyed a number of meals out and shopping trips as we got to grips with Christmas fast approaching.
The service industry is a growing one as we are buying less stuff in person, and in general – we have less ornaments, CDs, books etc and will be spending more and more on leisure activities where customer service is everything.
And what a difference we found in customer service from place to place. Uniformly poor in one hotel – a lack of training? – very different between different waiters that evening in a restaurant – a difference in attitude? – and overall, while we did receive fantastic service from many people, we concluded that a large part of poor service shows a disconnect between doing the job and receiving the pay.
When your manager gave you that small brown envelope with your pay in at the end of the week (if you are old enough to remember that – I received mine every week at Butlins!) – you had a very real sense of getting something in return for the job you had done and as your manager was giving it to you, how well your manager had seen you performing those tasks.
Now, it’s sometimes as if when you get a job you sign up for money to be deposited in your bank account at regular intervals and what you do in your job every day is a completely separate activity. So the service you deliver to a customer is irrelevant – you just turn up to your place of work and hey presto money appears.
This disconnect also applies in the office where people on much higher rates of pay than waiters and retail assistants are privileged to be able to get a coffee whenever they want, go outside for a smoke, and will think nothing of spending up to half an hour chatting about something social without making the connection they are getting paid £x for that time by the organisation.
If we were all to imagine being handed our money every ½ hour for the job we had just done how much would that change our approach and our effort, attitude and delivery?
As leaders it is up to us to lead by example and to give the feedback that makes the connection, between money and day to day work, as real as it can be.
With my love and best wishes.
David X