Treat your employees as consultants to improve customer service

Note: This is the second in a series of six articles about improving your business’ customer service.

In the last installment of this series, we talked about treating your employees well in order to improve customer service. We talked about breeding a company culture that rewards the team with parties, field trips — and every once in awhile — free food.

Today, we shift the focus to encouraging your employees to become consultants. Perception can be a powerful tool, and the more that you empower your employees to be independent and in charge of tasks, the less tethered to their supervisor they feel. Customer service will improve as a result.

If employees view themselves as consultants, they are more likely to engage customers more pleasantly. Furthermore, they’re more likely to take ownership over their role, resulting in a greater sense of pride in their work. Reference for Business says:

According to job design theories, increased autonomy should make employees feel a greater responsibility for the outcomes of their work, and therefore, have increased work motivation. Research indicates that when employees have greater levels of autonomy, their personality traits (specifically conscientiousness and extroversion) have a stronger impact on job performance. Thus, by giving employees more autonomy, they are better able to use their personal attributes to contribute to job performance.

There is such a thing as too much autonomy, however, as some workers prefer more direction and don’t want to take sole responsibility for a task or project. Also, if they’re not equipped with the proper skills to take the reigns, it could result in poor performance.

This post is brought to you by the good folks at Dale Carnegie Training of Central & Southern New Jersey. We would love to connect with you on Facebook and Twitter @CarnegieJersey.

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