Retailers Must Ensure That Employee Empowerment Doesn't Backfire

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By Ron Pawlowski

Article Tags:retail, retailer, leadership, operations, sales, competition, clientele, customers, relationships, te

Employee Empowerment is a hot term these days in the name of expedient customer service. Many progressive organizations who mean well, "empower" employees to make decisions on the spot when customers voice purchase problems or concerns in general. At first take, the concept sounds impressive. Employee empowerment can reduce bureaucracy with customers, fix problems quickly and makes employees feel more connected to the company.
In the early stages of implementation, it became apparent that employees could make the wrong decisions with customers that were either too lenient or too harsh in regards to the issue facing them. In many instances, companies were the victims or customers were treated unfairly by empowered employees who were making decisions without consideration of all the facts or long term implications.
Expectedly, organizations fine tuned their programs of employee empowerment through formal training programs and limitations on what employees could decide upon. A hotel employee might be able to offer a free night's stay at the hotel in the future for a disappointed guest but not a refund or a whole week at no charge. Ground rules to employee empowerment enable employees to deal with the majority of customer concerns on the spot and eliminate the frustration of passing the customer on to senior managers.
When employees intuitively make the right decisions, the concept works well. However, what are the consequences when employees make the wrong decisions or worse still, lead the customer to believe that their decision is absolute with no further considerations?
We can see the customer leaving and never to return. Worse still, they'll tell all the people they know, friend or foe how badly they were treated by your organization. Large scale bad publicity can be devastating to a retail or service organization and customers can have hundreds or even thousands in their network of friends and acquaintances to share their bad experiences with.
How can organizations prevent this type of disaster?
We all know that employees need formal training in customer resolution techniques before we empower them to make decisions close to the customer. We also know that we need to create a framework of limitations that employees must work within when making decisions on behalf of the company.
Where most companies fall short is failing to train employees to really read customers and ensure that they are sincerely happy with the outcome of their decisions and how they've been treated. Often what a customer does or how they act is more important than what they say. A customer may say that they are happy with an employee's decision over their concerns but may in reality be completely disappointed with no plans in doing business with your company ever again.
There are many indications that a customer is unhappy with an employee's decision. They may break eye contact with the employee when discussing the decision, or abruptly end the conversation. They may even just walk away. Employees must be trained to look for signs of dissatisfaction when deciding on customer concerns and if necessary, ask the customer if they feel that the decision is fair for them.
If it appears that losing a customer is imminent, employees should be trained to advise customers that this is the extent of what they are authorized to offer and would be happy to refer them to their manager. If a well managed employee empowerment program works well in nine out of ten instances, there's nothing wrong with involving the employee's manager if an unhappy customer can be turned around.
Customers may be happy with on the spot decisions made by employees most of the time and appreciate the expediency of the whole process. However no customer believes that short of the chairman of the board or owner of an organization should voicing a complaint reach a dead end within the ranks of its employees.

Take Action Today:
1) Review your organization's policy and procedures in regards to employee empowerment and customer service.
2) Are ALL customers either dealt with fairly or offered the opportunity to speak to someone more senior?
3) Are employees trained how to refer a customer to a senior employee gracefully and without losing credibility?
4) Does your organization track satisfaction levels of customers who have voiced a complaint? How many are lost forever?

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