No Customers, No Ketchup
The restaurant was empty when my family and I arrived on a Sunday afternoon. There were four young people behind the counter standing around with that, "Boy is this place slow," look on their faces. Two were playing with their smart phones.
We ordered our food and went to sit down. My wife went over the condiment bar to fill a couple of little cups with ketchup. She pushed down on the lever and nothing emerged from the dispenser. She tried again, and again, and again. Finally she went back to the counter and said, "You’re ketchup is out."
"Yeah, I know," said one of them. "We need to fill it. You want some packets?" she asked as she reached under the counter.
Maybe it’s a personal fault or an occupational hazard, but when I see something like this, I begin to take note to what will happen. It’s almost like a game. How many additional customers will attempt to use the ketchup dispenser before someone fills it? Here’s the answer. In the 25 minutes we were in the restaurant, twelve people entered. Six attempted to use the ketchup dispenser. Three alerted those at the counter that it was out. Three times they were told, "Yes, we need to fill it," and handed ketchup packets. The other three gave up. But in an almost empty restaurant, no one on the staff chose to take three minutes to fill the dispenser.
What can we conclude from this example?
It’s not about training. I’m sure that "Keep the condiment dispensers filled," is plastered all over the training materials. It’s not about intelligence. Some of the laziest people I know are brilliant. It’s about engagement. In my experience, the chances are excellent that these employees are not looking at, or even understanding, the big picture. Sure, what they’re doing can be monotonous. No, they’re not being paid a lot of money. Yes, they will probably be gone within six months. But how about teaching the basic business model anyway?
People care more when they understand how the place really operates. Someone gives you $6.85 for a combo meal. This much goes into food. This much goes into labor, overhead, advertising and so on. This tiny bit is profit. If you multiply that by 10,000 customers per year, the store earns a considerable amount of money. But if nobody fills the condiment dispensers, cleans the floor, and empties the trash, the customers stop coming in and you lose your job.
Will every one of them care? No. But even if one out of the four in this restaurant cares, the ketchup dispenser gets filled. How does this apply to you and your workplace?
80 is the New 65 for Gen X Retirement
Older Generation Xers are feeling the pain resulting from the change of US retirement models. According to this year’s Insured Retirement Institute report, two-thirds of Gen Xers are "not confident" about having enough money to cover their financial needs during retirement. Just 41% of the group has tried to figure out how much money they will need to save for retirement. Among those who have saved, only half have at least $100,000 in reserves.
Millennials, on the other hand, have learned from the economic crisis and are more aggressively seeking financial security earlier in their careers. Data from the Retirement Attitudes Survey from consulting firm Towers Watson shows that it’s not only healthier base pay that workers under 40 want, but also defined contribution and defined benefit plans. In the Towers survey, younger workers ranked the importance of retirement benefits in top ten of 23 factors that employees consider when taking a job.
This has significantly changed the way organizations who want to attract and retain employees of these generations design and promote their benefit packages. They invest in healthier pension and savings plans for their younger recruits.
Case Study
I run a call center for a consumer products company. On any given day, we have several people in the process of being trained. We’ve noticed over the past couple of years that our instruction does not seem to be "sticking" as well as it used to. We teach them the process, role play typical situations, keep an eye on them for about two weeks and then cut them loose. But a good number of them end up asking endless questions anyway. Some of the questions are about the stuff we just taught them, which becomes a time drain on those around them. In other cases, they ask about customer issues that we think are common sense. Many seem unable to think things through, so they come back to us for a specific procedure. Half the time the situation is so specific to the customer that there’s no way we have a process for it. You just have to find a customer-oriented solution. Are we doing something wrong? How can we fix this?
It sounds like you’ve got several factors at work here. First, we have evolved into a society that functions in the midst of constant distractions. Is it any wonder, then, much of what they’re told or shown does not "stick" the first time. In addition to listening and observing your instructions, they’re also thinking about all the other channels playing in their heads at the same time. This is not necessarily about age, by the way, although there is evidence that today’s digital natives are more shallow in their thinking.
Second, traditional "talk" training has lost a lot of its effectiveness especially for learning skills. More and more, we are becoming a menu-driven society, where we look to choice-oriented technology to provide us with options from which to choose our next action. The more we do this, the less likely we are to think for ourselves. Then there’s the impact of video on our culture. In a YouTube society, trainees have begun to expect more entertaining instruction and disengage more quickly when there’s a talking head at the front of the room.
Third, everyone, from senior leadership to the front line, is feeling pressured to do more with less, be more efficient, make fewer mistakes and increase productivity, all while working for the same pay as three years ago and worrying that the call center might be replaced by a robot. How much of this perception is reality remains to be seen, but the perception certainly has an impact on performance.
So here are a few suggestions. Whether they will be the fixes you seek depend on execution.
First, there’s selection. If you don’t do so already, include simulations in the process. This can be something as simple as providing each applicant with a couple pages of information about one or more of your products and the basic process you use for addressing service issues. When they arrive for the interview, place them at a work station for 20-30 minutes and have a few people call them with typical situations. How well did they prepare in advance using the pre-interview information? How well do they learn on the fly? How well do they recover from mistakes? And so on.
Another technique is ask them how they would resolve a few of the more unusual situations past customers have presented. Present the situation and watch what happens. Do they ask clarifying questions? Do they leap into a solution without thinking? Do they appear hesitant to take a risk? Are they strategic in their analysis of the problem? While they may not come up with the solution you did, this exercise will provide you with some great insights into how they will perform on the job.
Second, there’s training. As I mentioned, the talking head is dead for the most part. Today’s technology allows almost anyone to create their own learning management system upon which can be loaded video and audio clips, simulations, training games and a host of other resources that new hires can use to learn on their own. Yes, this will require some time and treasure to initiate. But once it is in place, trainers can spend more time with individual coaching and guidance rather than hours in front of a classroom competing with the distractions that learners have in their heads and hands. Those 30 and younger have learned how to learn in different ways than previous generations. We all need to embrace that.
Third, there’s reinforcement and coaching. The same video and audio assets you use in training should be made available to new employees once they’re on the job. People learn best through repetition and rehearsal. Some will need to watch a process video once. Other will to watch it a dozen times before catching on. Allow each person to learn at their own pace and in the comfort of their work space. Sure it may take some longer to come up to speed. Those individuals may also turn out to be your best and most loyal performers over time. Will this eliminate the procession of basic questions? No, but it will enable you to redirect those asking back to the digital assets they need to use.
You will still have to talk through some of those unusual situations presented by customers. But over time, you can back away by encouraging them to figure these out on their own. After all, the world is not going to end if they make a few mistakes. Make sure they know that.
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