Customer-Hostile Policies Feed Customer-Hostile Cultures

Don’t forget who pays for your business to exist

It’s important to have customer-friendly policies if you want to have a great customer service culture. Your policies drive team behaviors, so be sure they’re consistent with the brand you want to put forward.

I’m going to hark back to my recent post, “$325 Equals $210? The Math of Customer-Hostile Policies,” because apparently these policies are indicators of a broader cancerous culture. I’m flying home right now from Virginia Tech, where I spent two days with some wonderful, bright, and talented students. I arrive at my layover destination. I’m traveling on the airline with the customer-hostile policies I mentioned in my previous post. My final flight is scheduled to depart at 2:40 p.m. I look at my watch and it’s 1:05. I notice there’s an earlier flight to my destination that departs at 1:20, so I walk briskly to that gate (at my age, I no longer sprint through airports out of fear of pulling something).

…

Want to continue?

By logging in you agree to receive communication from Quality Digest. Privacy Policy.

Create a FREE account

Forgot My Password

Comments

Name them

Why not name the airline?

The Cancerous Culture starts at the top

No top management would ever do what you are suggesting because that would get them fired by the board. For almost any publicly traded company the number one, and usually the only, stakeholder to please is the shareholder. The number one concern that management thinks is important to shareholders is maximizing profits, whether that is really true or not, and spending resources on customer satisfaction or customer service skills for employees is not as important. In the long term it is a short-sighted way to maintain a company but it seems every company board is operating with short term goals in mind these days. Just asking Boeing.

Right Problem, Wrong Solution

You capture the lousy culture of the airline correctly, but blaming it on the lowly gate agent misses the mark. If she had granted your request she would at best be inconvenienced, and at worst been downright punished. And if the former, you can bet the airline's customer hostile policies are matched by equally employee hostile ones - Richard Branson astutely observed that if you want to take care of your customers you first must take care of the employees.

Or as Deming noted, 94% of process problems originate from management, so punishing her would do nothing to reduce the chances of a repeat debacle.

Systems thinking and leadership?

Absolutely, hammer on the willing worker rather than ask questions!

It's unfortunate to see Quality Digest publishing something that blames and recommends punishing the employee rather than asking the bigger question of how such poor quality service is being driven by the top of the organization.

Fire as many as you like, without changes in policies and leadership - that you allude to in the beginning of this piece - little improvement will be seen.

You're operating under the…

You're operating under the delusion that the airlines are more interested in customer service than they are in shareholder value and quarterly dividends. But sure, go ahead and fire all the employees who act according to how they are measured by the c-suite objectives. Once you have cut the workforce by 75% you'll no doubt get the level of service you deserve (but not the one you want).