Copyright © 1998, Nanette Miner
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Reprinted/excerpted with permission. The Training Doctor. Author: Nanette Miner. www.trainingdr.com

It's the Job, Stupid

By Nanette Miner, EdD

Do you remember Bill Clinton's platform a number of years ago, "It's the economy stupid?" When I was a new consultant, I had an eye-opening experience. From that experience, I learned that sometimes, "It's the job, stupid."

My assignment was to teach customer service skills to a group of inside-sales people. There were twenty people in the group altogether, and I was to conduct the exact same seminar, two days in a row, to ½ of the group each day. The impetus for the training session was a large number of customer complaints that focused on response time and the level of service that was provided by the inside sales people. I spent a number of weeks researching the role of an internal salesperson, researching the product line the company offered, and speaking with the director of personnel development at the organization about his take on what the job responsibilities were and what the corporate - as well as customer - expectations were. I arrived at the client site the morning of the first day, a ball of fire. Ready to take on the world and change these folk's customer service abilities.

During the initial hour of training we talked about good customer service and poor customer service and what kinds of behaviors and techniques demonstrated each. During this activity I realized that these folks knew how to give good customer service. I was at a loss as to why they weren't giving it to the customer - at least in the customer's eyes. About two hours in to the first day's seminar we discussed role-responsibilities. One of the participants mentioned that frequently a customer would ask for a copy of an invoice or a shipping order, to be faxed to them. The inside-sales department didn't have its own fax machine. So this required the salesperson to leave their desk and walk down the hall about 150 feet to another department to use that fax machine. A couple of things occurred when the salesperson attempted to completing this task: 1) they were no longer at their desk to accept calls, therefore overall response time suffered because there were less people left on the phones to answer incoming calls, and 2) if the fax machine were busy, the salespersons was faced with a dilemma - stay and wait f or the fax machine to be free, keeping them away from their desk for an extended period of time, or return to their desk to continue servicing other customers, and remember to try the fax again when given the opportunity. Sometimes that opportunity wouldn't present itself for 20 or 30 minutes or more! The rest of the group of 10 training participants concurred that this was a major frustration of their job.

That's when it hit me. I started to panic. There was a great weight in my chest. I realized I had nothing more to say to these people for the next two hours. What was my great revelation? It wasn't the people. It was the job, stupid! The people knew what their job responsibilities were. They understood the importance of giving timely service. They felt responsible for fulfilling customer requests. But the way in which their job was set up made it impossible for them to provide good customer service.

Take a look around your organization. Do you have policies, procedures, or functions that actually make your worker's jobs harder, and make providing customer service more difficult? Poll your workers. Include an anonymous survey with their next paycheck asking, "If there were one thing we could change to make your job easier, what would it be?" You'll be surprised by the response that you get. Sometimes people aren't doing the job they should be doing because the job itself prevents them from being successful.