Today we are going to focus on the benefit of paying attention. It is one thing to obtain input and feedback, but are you paying attention to it?
Many companies have extensive customer and team feedback mechanisms in place, but precious few really believe the areas pointed out to improve and then act on this information received. Often they justify in their own minds why the result didn’t meet their hopes and expectations.
In my days at Westpac Bank, when leading the Financial Services division we obtained feedback from customers and staff through varied means:
-Customer Surveys
-Customer Call Backs
-Mystery Shopping
-Team Surveys
-Retention Interviews
-Coffee Chats
-Suggestion Boxes
A major reason we were successful was how good we were at paying attention. We not only paid attention, we isolated what worked then kept doing it. After we kept doing it, we codified it and it worked on its own.
We paid attention to what our customers and team members were saying and if there were reasonable requests that would enhance the business overall, we implemented them. If there are some things that you cannot implement, get back to the person providing that feedback and give them the reasons why that particular thing cannot be put in place at this time.
Be careful not to focus on what is not working, but to identify what is working and amplify it. We didn’t get into a defensive, hunker-down-in-the-bunker mode. We didn’t spend all our time evaluating and defending. We simply amplified that which worked.
This is one of the major reasons that we had excellent results. Team and customer approval ratings were lifted to be consistently in the high 90 percentile range, with a team spirit envied by other areas of the Bank and our competitors.
Are you paying attention to what works?
Ken Wright
Email Ken – Ken@Engage4Results.com – for a free chapter on leadership from his Award Winning Book, “The People Pill”.
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