Tag Archives: front line

Many organizations strive to make a bigger impact with sales and the customer experience by driving cultural change. Is your organization getting the most from its efforts? What are you doing to improve customer service impact?

In the conference room, boardroom, or a pop-up meeting near the water cooler organizational leaders often consider how they’ll create the next rush of revenue. Often the design is based on only a few. What if there was a different approach?

Based On The Few

Organizations put forward a lot of effort on the hiring process. Certainly, this is important and valuable. The lifetime value of the right kind of talent in your organization is hard to measure. Mostly because it is likely a much bigger number than you can quickly realize.

Inside there is often a push for attracting or advancing the right talent to the C Suite.

There is a focus on sales and marketing teams that are properly aligned. Perhaps there are bonuses or commissions in place to drive engagement. In operations, it is often about quality control and perfecting the build and delivery of products and services.

Much of this design is focused on the few. The few who are leading the teams, the few who may be the next picked for advancement, and those who fit the image of organizational success. This focus is important but the activity that this culture builds is based only on those few.

Front Line Reach

What if the approach was different, what if instead of focusing on the top twenty percent of the organization you focused on the growth and development of the other eighty percent? How would sales revenues, profit margins, and customer satisfaction improve?

Imagine instead of leaders connecting with leaders, the entire front line was more connected with customers?

Sure, the influence of leader-to-leader is important, but what if instead of focusing on the goals, revenue, and growth presented by the twenty percent, you made a difference with the eighty percent.

Imagine if the eighty percent improved their emotional intelligence, honed their customer service skills, and the value was placed on front line customer facing engagement? Would this change the numbers?

Customer Service Impact

Certainly, this is not pointing the finger at the eighty percent with a proclamation that they are the only ones who need change. It is a proclamation that the focus for customer service impact will be more powerful from the front line, not grooming the next manager.

When the focus is on the management team, fewer people are touched. If you’re going to make your organization great, leaders will matter, but it is the eighty percent who are closer to the front line who will show the customers what your organization is all about.

Running The Marathon

Consider this, thirty thousand people run in the Boston Marathon each year. Certainly the few at the front are honored and important. Their accomplishments are great. The report of their success will touch many lives.

If they were the only ones running in the event, it would not be nearly as impactful. It’s the reach of the other twenty nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety participants who will ultimately touch more people and more lives in a more personal way.

It’s not about the ten, it is about the thirty thousand.

You can have ten people doing great things, but measuring the true impact of thirty thousand. That is almost hard to imagine.

– DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

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