Words of wisdom

A good friend wrote to me today and said 'good customer service, a bit like good people management and diversity, fall off the agenda when everyone's in their survival mode.'  How true this is.  I look at a number of the  organisations that I am working with and they are well into survival mode and in many cases this is resulting in a reduced focus on customer satisfaction and diversity. This is after all the easiest area to get rid of.  The fallout from this is that people are losing their livelihood.  Some of these people have worked loyally for many years and have become subject matter experts.  I am sure that the future for many of them looks bleak.  

I think that most people would accept that cuts have to be made, but there are two considerations from my point of view.  Firstly, what are organisations doing to rid themselves of those people who are being paid a salary but do not contribute to the organisation and secondly, how are they dealing with people who are about to be given bad news?

This is where the customer focus needs to be turned inwards.  There should be a personal touch with someone passing on the bad news in person supported by a letter that gives a full explanation of the following processes.  The police in particular have not been in this position before and I was party to a seminar in London recently where the question was asked 'do the police have the leadership and management skills to be able to handle what is coming?'

When stories abound of staff being given unsigned letters that have cut and pasted from other letters; or people being made to do the walk of shame whereby they walk passed colleagues, get told they are losing their jobs and have to walk passed the same colleagues, the answer must be 'No.'  Ultimately you are left with two sets of people; those who are going and those who are staying.  Both need support and motivation as roles, processes and jobs change.  

A more poignant question may be to ask whether the HR 'professionals' have had any customer service training? So maybe when organisations are in survival mode they need to retain their customer service and save some of it for the people who are trying to survive?