At Harrisons, we believe every single customer feels the impact of your people and culture strategy and practices, or lack thereof. Today’s example is a personal one.
I was at a sandwich chain, got my order, walked away and realised it wasn’t quite right. So I went back and said, “Excuse me, I ordered a veggie patty and unfortunately there’s no veggie patty in this sandwich.”
Before I could finish my sentence, the staff member who served me jumped in: “No, you didn’t. You ordered a Veggie Delite.”
That put me on the back foot. I started to respond and, again before I could finish, a second staff member who was nowhere near us when I ordered chimed in: “No, no, you ordered a Veggie Delite.”
At that point I could see I wasn’t going to reach a resolution, so I left, ready to go online and be a keyboard warrior. I didn’t. But I wanted to.
How it could have gone
There’s a simple framework for this: recognise, reassure, resolve.
- Recognise: “Oh, I’m so sorry you didn’t get the sandwich you wanted.” That’s true whether I ordered a veggie patty or not.
- Reassure: “It’s important to us that we get it right.” Also true, regardless of who made the mistake.
- Resolve: “Let me just check what it was put through as.” Then either, “It went through as a Veggie Delite, but we’re happy to make you a veggie patty. It’s just a small difference in price.” Or, “You’re absolutely right, it went through as a veggie patty. I’m sorry we missed it, we’ll fix it now.”
In either scenario, the business doesn’t lose any money, and doesn’t accuse the customer of any wrongdoing.
The bigger picture
What stayed with me as an HR professional wasn’t one bad interaction. It was that two employees, on the same shift, had the same approach, and it was a long way from what most of us would expect of good customer service. When it’s two people, it’s rarely about the individuals. Something behind the counter is shaping how they respond.
If this business were a Harrisons client, we’d run an HR health check to get to the bottom of it and give recommendations in priority order. But off the top of my head, it’s likely one of these:
- No training. Nobody has shown staff how to handle a complaint.
- Training that isn’t good enough. It exists, but it doesn’t prepare people for the real conversation.
- Good training that isn’t landing. Maybe it’s not part of induction and these are new starters. Maybe it’s never refreshed and they did it years ago. Or maybe it’s a tick-and-flick online course nobody pays attention to.
- An engagement issue. They know exactly how to respond to a complaint. They just don’t care.
- A culture issue. If there’s a culture of blame and fear, people get defensive and won’t take ownership, just in case they did get it wrong.
Your HR is showing
People and culture practices are often seen as something that happens quietly in the background, or that’s handled by a corporate team somewhere else. But they’re felt by the end user every day. Your customers will never read your HR policies, but they feel every one of them.
Tell me your story
If you’ve had a customer experience that didn’t land quite right, send me a DM or share it with me in the comments and I’ll give you my thoughts on what might be going on behind the counter from an HR perspective. And if you’re a business owner wrestling with any of these issues, I’d love to hear from you. Let’s have a chat about what might be going on.
Remember, your HR is Showing.
Kelly is a motivated HR professional with a passion for strategy and innovation. Kelly has extensive HR management experience in leadership positions, as well as experience in an operational leadership role in the financial services industry which strengthened her commercial acumen and operational excellence, enabling her to align organisational human resource needs to commercial objectives. Kelly has experience across various industries including hospitality, finance and aged care, and excels in developing strategies to align to business outcomes, creating efficiencies and innovation, leading teams, coaching and influencing and stakeholder management.
