During my twenty years in front-line customer service roles, I always felt as if I was fighting a battle with my managers to get the resources I needed to deliver great service to my customers. It seemed to me that none of the people who were responsible for me really understood what it was like to stand on your feet all day and be polite and friendly to customers. I worked in the catering business, and I’m sure none of my managers really knew how frustrating it was when I ran out of food. There were also occasions where I had been supplied with far too mucch food and a lot of it went to waste, which I found frustrating in a totally different sense.
It wasn’t just the practical resources that were missing, though. During my days in customer service roles, which started in the 1970’s and went through until the mid-1990’s. I found emotional support in very short supply too. What do I mean by emotional support?
Well, I can remember being praised by my manager way back in 1977, when I had worked really hard during an exceptionally busy Saturday evening in the pub I worked in at the time. The landlord was fulsome in his praise of my work that night, and that praise ‘fuelled’ me to deliver several similar performances, although I don’t recall the praise being repeated. Perhaps that is why I moved to pastures new in 1978!
During my 24-year railway career I had many different bosses, and eventually became a ‘boss’ of sorts myself. The managers who consistently got the best out of me, and others in their teams, were those who recognised great customer service when they saw it, and made sure that recognition was passed on. When I became responsible for my own team in the late 1980’s, I always ensured that everyone on the team was thanked for their contribution at the end of the day’s work. I also did everything I could to make sure that the practical resources were there, and that people in the team knew what was expected of them. Our team went on to have a great reputation for customer service, and everyone wanted to be on ‘our team’.
Nowadays, I go around saying that the role of a manager is to provide the practical and emotional resources to enable their team to be the best they can possibly be. That’s not just something I thought of in an instant, it’s based on my own experiences!