Do your staff suffer from any of the following diseases?

The ‘7 deadly sins’ highlighted below are frequently associated with service based industries, especially the likes of Hotels. They are all signs of poor training or communications, which frequently lead to customer service problems or damage your reputation. Managers need to be aware and make sure that their staff are ‘inoculated’.

1. I wasn’t there!

I didn’t handle the initial call, enquiry or complaint, so why should I handle this now? ‘Sorry I can’t/will not help and oh by the way the member of staff who was handling this is on holiday/on sick leave/never coming back … we’ve all experienced this.

This is a standard form problem avoidance which can cause considerable customer dissatisfaction and make you and your staff appear to be ineffectual or even inept.

2. ‘Ring’ around the roses

The well known ‘game’ transferring phone calls from one department to another, this also happens in face to face encounters. The end result of such behaviour can be very frustrated customers, or even lost business.

It happens, you get passed around from department to department having to go right through the whole explanation all over again, only to be told right at the end, oh this is not the right department, I’ll pass you to ….. which leads to a very frustrated customer, and don’t ask about automated call systems!

3. Promises - Promises

Staff promise much but then never follow through – the classic case is promising to ‘call back’ and never doing so.

How often is this happening and what are the consequences? Far too often I hear the tale of staff being long on promises and short on delivery. The biggest culprit is ‘he’s not at his desk, I’ll get him to call back’ – we all know that its not going to happen! Another example is when staff say yes, even when they know it can’t be done, all in the name of keeping the customer happy.

4. Miscommunication or Missed Communication

Are your staff and customers having ‘communication’ while not actually communicating? In other words the message is not getting through or both the staff and the customer are actually communicating different messages.

This is a recurring problem which results in your staff being seen as lacking in ability, with the end result being an increasingly frustrated customer.

5. Foot in mouth disease

Making mistakes and then making them worse. Mistakes do happen, the big question is how do your staff recover from mistakes or do they manage to make a small problem even larger. Say one thing and mean another is a frequent problem.

We also of course have the ‘message in the mouth’ disease when poorly written material has the same effect or worse.

6. Getting mauled by Tigers

Can your staff handle complaining customers, or do they just get mauled? Quite frequently this happens because they either don’t have the confidence to communicate with the guest or their miscommunication is the cause of the mauling.

Tigers can be turned into pussy cats if you know how. If you don’t, then make sure you have a good doctor as your going to get torn to pieces.

7. It’s Engrish!

They may be speaking English but its not what you would expect or even recognise.

I recently went to a 3 star Hotel in Singapore, only to find that the reception staff spoke perfect Singlish. OK Lah! It was even more of a shock when I found out they have lots of British and European guests, I hate to think what impression they get. What is worrying that this should be noticeable to the managers and is easily corrected. My shock was compounded by the fact that they want to become a 4 star hotel!

Can these problems effect anyone? The answer is yes, as there are plenty of examples even from local 4 and 5 star hotels.

Misunderstandings, resulting from poor communication, can easily cause a problem or make it worse. Further, once a dispute has started, communication problems often develop because people in conflict do not communicate with each other as frequently, as openly, and as accurately as they do when relationships are not strained. Thus communication is central to most situations.

If your company is diagnosed with any or all of the above, get help fast before it is too late.

Michael Cope is the Programme Director for Custom Design Training in Singapore. For more information on how CDT can help visit www.cdt.com.sg

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