Stay light on your toes
Staying close to your customers is one thing. Taking the ideas that bubble up from the customer-interface level and using them to better your company is something else. The latter requires a lot more action and an ability to keep your company as nimble and adaptable as you can.
Stemper says a nimble company does two things well: It develops channels for customer and employee input, and it minimizes the layers through which that information must travel. Depending on the size of your organization, you might need a certain number of administrative layers to run the company effectively. But information from the ground level should pass through the fewest number of hands possible before reaching the desks of you and your leadership team.
It goes back to building a team that is focused on the common goal of customer service. You can’t reduce the number of links in the communication chain if your company is full of silos, fiefdoms and toes waiting to be stepped on.
“As leaders, you have to be able to leapfrog and get to the front lines,” Stemper says. “You have to build a culture where everyone is trying to be at the front line and nobody takes offense if you leap over them to get to the front line. You want everybody to thrive on the ability to do that.
“To build that kind of an organization, when you come across problems, you don’t take it out on the people in between. It’s called work because you have to work, and you generally work because something isn’t going the way you want it to. That’s why you need to have a management style that is focused on getting it right and doing what it takes to fix things. You want to understand the flaws in your organization and sort out the solution as a team. If you can do that, you are developing a positive place to work.”
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