The downside of successful Frontline Staff
Customers will assess everything from location, price, products, services and processes to decide if a business is remarkable but mainly, customers assess staff performance.
The performance of the staff is not just about their knowledge or ability to get things done, it’s how they communicate and how they behave and those two things done poorly can override all the other aspects and leave customers feeling that the business doesn’t deserve their time, their money or their respect.
Lightbulb Training Solutions provide the training and the support that develop Frontline Staff into confident and professional communicators who provide consistently excellent service. We specialise in human behaviours at work and we have programs that make it easy for businesses to plan for staff to gain remarkable reputations.
But, before you get too ‘giddy’ with your plan for success, I need to bring you back to earth for just a minute. Every plan for success has to have a plan to manage the impact of the success.
Every successful person knows that success does have a downside – for example:
• Successful entertainers will tell you that loss of privacy is the downside of success.
• Successful sports people find media commitments eat into their training time.
• Successful chefs have to keep coming up with new dishes.
• Successful writers will still have to accept bad reviews.
• Successful doctors will be busy and have to keep learning.
Successful frontline staff show up everyday as positive team members, great communicators and self aware individuals…BUT, these wonderful attributes can bring challenges just like the list above.
The following outlines some of these challenges and I’ve provided tips to share with your Frontline employees so they can handle success:
• Providing consistently excellent levels of face to face and telephone communication can be tiring: make and take time out to reflect, reward, relax and recharge.
• Customers will ask for you and some will even wait to talk to you: help everyone on the team become customer service professionals so you’re not the only one in demand.
• You’re going to be busy listening to compliments: improve your time management skills.
• You will be considered an expert: keep your process, product/service knowledge up to date.
• New staff will need your help: practise patience and remember you also had to train to be successful.
• You may be given new opportunities both in and out of work: be clear on your own career and personal goals.
• Other staff may take advantage of you: practise saying no professionally.
• Difficult customer and co-worker interactions will still exist: never lose empathy for them.
• You may be nominated for awards: gain public speaking and/or presentation skills.
• When you are a customer, you will be disappointed when you are not served by a customer service professional: tell them about this book.
And above all else, remind staff to aim high but remember - getting to the top is just the start, staying there is the art of success. We help businesses gain and maintain remarkable reputations through consistency and it all starts in The Service Excellence Zone.
By Cate Schreck - Director of Lightbulb Training Solutions