HR And Customer Service

As I mentioned in my last post, computer time is in high demand at the moment, so this post is actually being composed via my Android smartphone's blogger app. Typos and typing speed are both an issue, and I have no idea if coding HTML works at all, so we'll see how things go.

I wanted to talk about HR and customer service. As those of you who follow this blog may know, my background is in retail and customer service. This background combined with my undergraduate work in anthropology concentrated a real interest in people. Of course, any customer service worker can tell you it ain't all it's cracked up to be, but.ultimately I enjoy helping people. It's also really obvious to the average frontline customer service employee that without them, your company goes nowhere. They represent your brand to the public everyday; good or bad, they are your branding in action. HR is as dependent on these frontline staff for our jobs as the salesperson is on his or her clients. Looking at other employees as your customers creates a service mentality on the part of HR is important. As much as the HR department is the representative of your organization's policies, doing your best to create an employee-centric environment, and provide the best service you can will increase employee satisfaction in the same way that good service increases customer satisfaction and contributes to organizational success.
I don't have any research to back this up, particularly while posting from my phone. This is just an opinion, because to me it seems like common sense. Agree? Disagree?

It's Moving Day!

Well, we're finally here. That means that hopefully I should be back to paying my poor neglected blog a little more attention from now on. Because it is moving day, though, this one's gonna be a pretty short post.

This whole move has been one of those experiences that just goes to show that things never go according to plan. First, our storage unit where our stuff was going to live for two weeks until we could move in was initially supposed to be part of a Uhaul one months' free storage deal. Upon our arrival, we found out that this particular storage place is not actually a part of that promotion, despite being featured as such on the website. This did not impress us much, although the folks at Lo Cost Mini Storage here in Calgary were totally awesome about it, and apologized, and only charged us two weeks storage instead of a month because they wanted to make us happier. I still wasn't impressed with Uhaul, because why list the storage as part of that promo if it isn't? However, what really annoyed us in this moving process was when we realized on the 30th that Uhaul had lost our reservation for a truck to do an in-town move. By this time, of course, there were no trucks available, either. Lo Cost Mini Storage came through for us again, though, and gave us a number to call. Got us a truck and three guys to help move stuff- more expensive that Uhaul would have been, but it got us moved on the right day, so we're gonna class that one as a win, and are again quite happy with Lo Cost for helping us out.

Of course, this morning, the truck got loaded no problem, but then we got to our building and the elevator was out. After an hour, we got it working, but that hour adds considerable extra cost to this whole process, so all in all, I'm glad we like the place we got, because I don't think we can afford to move again for a while!

So, if you need storage in Calgary, we recommend Lo Cost Mini Storage on Burbank Rd. They were very nice, and very helpful. So far the best part of the whole experience.

Customer Service

To date in my career, I have worked mostly in the customer-service field, primarily as a frontline worker and manager. I've worked for organizations that are great at trying to build a more personal relationship with their customers, and I've worked for organizations that focus on getting as many people in and out as possible.

In my personal experience, I strongly prefer the former. I like being able to talk to people and form a bit of a rapport with them. I enjoy finding out exactly what my customer's needs are and formulating a solution that will serve them best, and I have very high rates of customer satisfaction as a result. It means a lot to me and it means a lot to my organization to have customers come back just to tell me how happy they are with my service. It doesn't happen every day, but it does happen.

My current employer is very focused on the customer experience. We are a high-end retailer, dealing with custom product, and this is the only approach that really makes sense. If you don't make any attempt to stand out from the crowd, people will likely make their decision on where to buy based on price. Well, competing on price alone is pretty tough. Sooner or later, some other retailer comes along with prices you can't beat. In our case, it's pretty common; it isn't that our product is more expensive than anyone else selling the comparable thing, it's just that we don't sell generic or lower-quality versions of our products, and other places do. We focus on the top-quality end of the market, and once you're doing that anyway, you had better provide good service to back it up! And if you want to build your business, you had better provide great service to back it up.

This article talks about creating a customer-centered organization. I think particularly in a market that has abundant competition, choosing to stand out on the basis of your customer service is a tremendous idea, and, if done right, is a great strategy. If you go into your day thinking of ways to serve your customer better, that will show.

This does not mean that the customer is always right. There are many cases
where the customer is definitely wrong, but the approach you take makes all the difference. How you resolve the issue can have a tremendous impact on the customer; I've made customers for life on the basis of how I handled an issue, and not necessarily because I gave them everything they wanted, but because I showed them I was willing to go to bat for them, and give them everything I could do.

I personally try to approach HR with the same spirit in mind. My job is not to quote policy at people and tell them why they can't; my job is to try and serve them better. Good HR comes from the realization that my job isn't to support the company. My job is to support the employee, because supporting the employee is in the best interests of the company. Happy employees work harder. Happy employees stay longer, and recommend their company to others. Happy employees don't start lawsuits. And so on. Granted, I can't always give employees what they want, just like the customer is not always right. But if I go into my day trying to understand my employees' needs and give them the best solution I can, then I've done my job right.