Empowerment vs. Standards: You Can and Need to Have Both

I often hear managers tell their employees to go forth and create great customer experiences. Without arming employees with well-defined standards and a thorough understanding of their job and company policy, that kind of empowerment can end up being disastrous for everyone involved. Micah Solomon, author and customer service speaker, shares his ideas about walking the line between empowerment and enforcement. I think there’s something in this article for every manager—especially those who want to know how to improve customer service in the call center space.

Kim Totty, Director of Marketing

I talk and write a lot about employee autonomy (or, if you prefer, empowerment) in customer service and the customer experience. It’s important stuff.

I also spend a lot of time stressing the need to set and maintain service and brand standards. It’s important stuff as well.

Autonomy (empowerment) is a lot sexier than setting standards, so let’s talk about autonomy first. A favorite example: The Ritz-Carlton has for many years given employees a theoretical $2,000 of discretion–that’s per employee per guest–to be used to solve any customer complaint in the manner the employee feels is appropriate.

Freaky, huh: How could so much creative and monetary freedom succeed? And succeed without bankrupting the business?

It works because it changes how employees view customers–and how customers view employees. If an employee starts off defensive, rigid or withholding, a customer tends to respond by escalating demands. It’s a classic vicious cycle. But when employees are able to start the interaction from an accepting, flexible, and generous position, customers naturally feel inclined to be reasonable in return. The cycle turns virtuous.

Indeed, Ritz-Carlton leadership recently verified to me that an employee has never had to resort to using all of that discretion. Still, knowing it is there has been a great builder of strength and responsibility for employees

Think about its value as an ongoing training tool: It serves as a reminder of management’s belief in honoring a guest’s potential lifetime value—and is proof that management is willing to put money behind that belief. (And, indeed, these are supremely well-trained employees who are entrusted with this discretionary, autonomous power at the Ritz.)

In order to keep customers happy, it helps if your people are able to respond in a powerful and immediate way to service failures—without waiting for a manager’s okay. This carte blanche approach has grown even more important in these days of customer rebellions Twittering out of control: Only with immediate and broad discretionary powers is there a chance your frontline employees will be able to defuse complaints before they get posted online.

The need for standards

But autonomy isn’t the whole story. All-autonomy-all-the-time is like throwing your employees in the lake and hoping they can swim. They may survive, but they’re not gonna turn in the Diana Nyad-level performances that your customers want.

Business works best when you provide your employees with well-defined standards, accompanied by the reasoning behind them and autonomy in how they’re carried out.

Here’s how to do it.

Define your standards using a three-part summary statement format:

1. Why the service is of value (why we’re doing this in the first place)

2. The  emotional response we’re aiming to have the customer feel

3. The expected way to accomplish the service

Point three should be formulated in a manner that allows judgment and discretion to be used in all but mission-critical situations.

Formulated this way, standards help ensure that every part of your service reflects the best way your company knows to perform it—a prescription that your autonomously performing employees can then feel free to adapt to suit the needs and wishes, expressed or unexpressed, of the customers they’re actually facing at the moment.

Here’s what it should look like.

What follows is a practical example of how a company might summarize a single standard:

• We answer all web-form queries in a speedy, personable, non-automated fashion that assists and reassures, binding the customer or prospective customer to our company on the first response.

• The response time will be within 35 minutes.

• The initial answer provided will either be complete or, if that’s not possible, will couple a partial, brief answer with a promise of a comprehensive future answer within a specified time frame. In that case, expert assistance will be requested internally, but the initial respondent will own the follow-up until completed to the customer’s satisfaction.

Then, take the time necessary to more fully explain your reasoning to employees:

‘‘We need to answer customer inquiries faster than anyone else, because our studies, last undertaken 14 months ago, demonstrate this as one of the top five controllable factors in making a sale. The response needs to be friendly and professional for that reason as well.’’

And define any unclear terminology:

• ‘‘Faster than anyone else’’ means within two hours for an initial query, and within fifteen minutes for a follow-up query related to the initial query.

• ‘‘Friendly and professional’’ means to ‘‘use your best judgment,’’ but also to ‘‘avoid the following list of phrases and consider the substitutes listed below instead.’’

Finally, you need to measure and, as needed, reinforce the standards. 

Standards and autonomy: Why the hybrid path is the best path.

“All autonomy, all the time!” is by and large a bust. It doesn’t work so well (using the example of answering incoming Web queries) to tell an employee to ‘‘answer customer queries anytime you want,’’ because answering customer queries promptly is a crucial part of giving great customer service; it can’t be left to this level of potential variability.

And mindless, unexplained bossiness about standards is equally unworkable. It doesn’t work to say to an employee, ‘‘You have to hurry and check this function off your list, or you’re in trouble.’’ You’ll end up with cursory replies, as the employee misapprehends the reason he’s responding, which now becomes not to take care of the customer, but because he’s checking something off a list to avoid angering his boss.

The hybrid path, straddling the line between employee autonomy and definition of standards, is the only path to business success, consistent, sustainable business success.