Customer service experts have long known that one of the quickest ways to alienate customers is to treat them unfairly. At the same time, as long as you handle service failures fairly, customers tend to be extremely forgiving.

Many managers, unfortunately, don't seem to realize that fair treatment of their staff has a direct ripple effect on how staff will treat customers. Sometimes staff will be so incensed by lack of fair treatment by management that they engage in sabotage, destroying property, poisoning customer relationships, and joining the chorus of negative word-of-mouth publicity about their own employers!

Ensuring that staff policies are not only fair but are also implemented and enforced fairly will have a direct impact on how fairly staff will treat customers. It amounts to improving customer service by improving staff perceptions, in this case about the very specific issue of being treated fairly. At TMI, we call this a back-door approach to service quality. It can have as much positive impact as teaching better customer service techniques.

What are the Human Resources issues that particularly seem to annoy staff when not handled fairly? They include the following:

Performance appraisal systems. In one research study, employees who were given a new and fairer performance appraisal system indicated they would stay with their organization for three more years as a direct result of the new and fairer system.

Promotion systems. If individuals believe they should have beeen at least considered for a position, but they were never asked or were passed over for someone of less experience who seemed to have an "in" with the boss, they tend to lose immediate motivation.

Working schedules. Some individuals appear to receive special treatment by getting the best work schedules. This leaves large numbers of staff potentially alienated because someone received "special treatment" that they were denied.

Salary increases. As vigorously as organizations attempt to keep salaries secret, our experience is that most people know exactly how much their colleagues are getting paid. As a result, salary schedules need to be clearly defined and then fairly applied. Otherwise, staff spend virtually all day long thinking, "I'm not getting paid as much as ...., why should I work so hard?" That's a dangerous attitude to hold when working with customers.

Recognition. Managers can easily alienate certain staff members by publicly acknowledging certain individuals and not ever mentioning others. This can result in an entire department getting alienated. Excessive focus on sales results, for example, can turn off customer support staff.

The most critical ingredient in making sure that staff don't feel they have been bitten by the unfairness bug, is to be clear about policies, procedures, and then to implement them even handed. This requires a professional Human Resources function. How do your staff members talk about the Human Resources function in your company? Do they think it is part of the problem, or do they see it as a resource for themselves? Managers also need to make sure that they let their staff know they personally want to hear when any one thinks that the organization is not treating someone fairly.

Lack of fairness is definitely a bug that needs to be nipped in the bud.

Janelle Barlow
Coauthor, A Complaint Is a Gift
 

Previous "Complaint Is A Gift Corner" pages: 
 

#1	Overselling Service
#2	Not Listening to Complaints
#3	Plastic Chicken
#4	Complaints You Can Do Nothing About
#5	A+ Complaint Handling
#6	Beware! Others are Watching You
#7	At Least Keep Talking!
#8	Let Customers Know You'll Tell Someone
#9	If You're Going to Apologize, Then Mean It
#10	Keep Front-life Staff Well Informed
#11	Don't Set Goals to Reduce Complaints
#12	Products Used During Special Events
#13	Best Practices of Complaint-friendly Organizations
#14	Complaints About Mother Nature!
#15	Socially Offensive Situations
#16	A Complaint Is a Gift in Action
#17	Information Systems  Users' Complaints, I
#18	Information Systems  Users' Complaints, II
#19	Creating an Internal Service Culture
#20	When Your Customers are Industrial Buyers
#21	Customers Who are Poor Complainers
#22	Complaints That are Difficult to Talk About
#23	Do You Mistreat Your Customers?

We invite you to submit your "best" examples by fax or e-mail. We won't print any company names with the "poor" examples, because we believe that every organization fails from time to time. We will give credit to companies delighting their customers. In the case of the "poor" examples, we'll comment on how we think this situation could have been handled better. If you want us to list your name, please tell us that is what you want to do.

A Complaint Is a Gift, The Training Program 

A Complaint Is a Gift, The Book

Note: We have been getting e-mail from our readers asking us to list the names of the companies who get complaints. Our policy is to never list names. The reason for this is because every company fails from time to time, and we wouldn't want to tar some company's name just because of one bad example. Furthermore, we are dependant upon the writer's side of the story. We don't know for sure what happened, and in the name of fairness, we will not post names. Furthermore, the purpose of this corner is not to pass complaints along to corporations. This Complaint Is a Gift corner is designed to look at examples of good and bad complaint handling so we can learn from these experiences. Please, if you have a direct complaint you want a company to learn about, contact them directly. In many cases, we have never heard of the company in question and have no idea how to reach them. Janelle Barlow

tel: 702 939-1800

fax: 702 939-1804

email: 

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