Back to the flaw

Do you really experience your business as your customers and colleagues do?

“Management by walking around” always struck me as an odd phrase. Visit a store, a warehouse, a factory or a call-centre and it is perfectly possible to ‘walk around’ and understand nothing about what you are looking at.

I found myself reflecting on that last week when I was asked at an event whether management and Boards going ‘back to the floor’ was a good way for them to spot problems in their businesses early. My answer was something along the lines of “well, yes, but it really does depend what you do when you are there".

Many years ago I worked with a business who’s customer service had almost entirely collapsed - to the extent that stories were appearing in the national press about just how awful their call-centre experience was. What stands out for me now was not the story of how that happened (they weren’t the first or the last) or even about how it was fixed (which ended up being simple).

What stands out was that the problem went on for months and months before anyone in the top team at the business even noticed. Management reporting figures (which should have shown things like the time taken to answer calls and resolution rates) were being carefully massaged, and of course none of the senior leaders in this business would ever dream of calling the call-centre themselves - they just emailed the management there and got what they wanted. They also didn’t really spend any time talking to customers, and didn’t frequent the corners of social media where complaints were loud and easily spotted.

If you get that disconnected from what is really going on in your business, you are in trouble. And it is surprisingly easy to make that mistake.

Most retailers, for example, will make a great fuss about sending senior people and head office teams to work in stores for some of the year, often at peak times, and there is no doubt that for all sorts of reasons, cultural and practical, that is a good thing to do. But it is worth being clear about what those people are actually going to do when they are there.

At the worst end of the spectrum of possibilities is the ‘royal visit’ where these newcomers wander around saying hello to people and asking questions. We’ve all done that, and if you ask the right questions and actually listen to the answers there can be a lot of value in that kind of exercise, but the learning you will take away will be limited to the set of things people are prepared to tell you (and further limited by your ability to really hear what they are telling you).

A better store visit is where you roll your sleeves up to help - even if that help is limited to stocking shelves and unloading deliveries. At least then you will get some practical experience of what a big part of your store colleague experience is actually like.

But the biggest bang for your buck comes when you can interact with customers and take their money. I remember thinking I had a pretty good handle on our myriad of mobile phone bundle deals when I was in that industry, for example, until the first time I tried to talk an actual customer through them in a store. I also remember, in a different business, trying out the litany of ‘upsells’ that we were asking store colleagues to parrot to every customer (the warranty, the loyalty card pitch and so on) and realising that all I was doing was making this customer (and the queue behind her) angry at the wasted time. It was easy to make these demands and set these KPIs in a Boardroom, but an entirely different experience in the real world.

So if you are going to insist that your colleagues (and especially senior ones) spend some time in the store, it is a great investment to begin by giving them some training on how the till works (for added bonus points, give them a till login of their own) and on what their customers are likely to ask them. Then set them loose in an actual store. I guarantee the next Board discussion about product development or customer experience will be richer for the investment of time.

There is a more general point here for any business, not just retailers. It is too easy as an executive to get disconnected from not only the real experiences of your colleagues but also the real experience of your customers. You probably don’t call your own call-centre because someone sorts out your problem for you. If you purchase through your own channels, you almost certainly get some kind of special or different treatment whilst you do. And if you hear from customers directly, it is either from friends who may sugar-coat their feedback or through the sterile one-way mirror of a focus group viewing room.

This is a missed opportunity. There is tremendous richness to be unlocked from experiencing just what your customers do, and from having some real insight into what you are asking your colleagues to do every day.

The debate about whether you are getting enough deliveries per day (drops per van) is richer if you’ve been out on one of the vans and experienced how challenging that can be. The discussion about why customers are cancelling their subscription is better if you’ve taken calls in your call-centre and tried to persuade them to change their minds. And goodness knows the debate about how to protect your front-line colleagues against daily threats from shoplifters and others feels more personal if you’ve done a late shift yourself recently.

My advice to Boards and senior teams, then?

1. Ditch the royal visit, do some training and get out and experience what your colleagues experience

2. Don’t hide behind glass when you get customers in for feedback - I’ve experienced some terrific working sessions where leadership teams have engaged directly with groups of customers - the feedback is real, there is nowhere to hide and the actions which arise are infinitely richer as a result.

It is a hallmark of businesses that lose their way that they are so often blind to what is going on around them. They don’t really understand why customers don’t value their offering any more. They rail in frustration that instructions they issue to the front line don’t really materialise in practice, without realising that that is because they were impossible to implement.

Consumer businesses are always KPI led, and running a retail or hospitality business on thin margins in a tough economy requires a laser-like focus on performance improvement. But all of that drive for improvement will be richer if it is discussed and designed by a leadership team who have really experienced the practical realities of the business.

I’d love to hear your examples of customer closeness and of executives really experiencing the shop floor - we can all learn from pockets of best practice - do comment here and if you think this is an interesting topic, please consider sharing the post too?