Mary Gober International

Mary’s Column

One of the most crucial elements in our organisations today is an atmosphere of negativity vs. positivity. This is especially relevant in light of the latest research indicating that customer service is seen to be getting worse or not improving and from the recent study conducted by Mintel, finding that a massive 90% of the British public are irritated by the service they receive from call centres.

How very easy it would be for us to become disillusioned about just how far our service industry has progressed or even regressed over the past 10 years. How do you feel when you read research such as this? It must be so frustrating and disappointing to the thousands of people working diligently to deliver excellent levels of service every day.

If the customer service experience in the UK is so negative, how do we, as customer service leaders and managers, inspire positivity in our teams? Is it possible to engender positivity in a somewhat demoralised workforce, constantly under criticism, to create a change and improvement in the quality of customer service it offers?

My answer is a resounding ‘yes’. How?

Positivity is like electricity running throughout an organisation. How do you generate a strong current of positivity – the energy and mind-set that is needed to excel at delivering an outstanding customer experience, especially in the face of increasing customer dissatisfaction.

Whose responsibility is it anyway? Is it the leader and manager’s – or the individual employee’s responsibility to maintain a positive, optimistic focus and energy?

Let’s start with looking at what are the signs and symptoms of the malaise of negativity. First within yourself, then within your people.

How do you manifest negativity? Do you become angry, intolerant, impatient? Critical, resentful, short-tempered, feel fearful and vulnerable or start to blame others for the situation you find yourself in? Do you become cynical about new initiatives or proposed improvements? Are you quick to suspect a negative ulterior motive in those around you who want to change things for the better? Are you openly critical of your own organisation to colleagues, suppliers, and customers or even family and friends? Deep inside, do you feel discouraged, helpless and pessimistic about your own ability to affect a change for the better?

How do your people express their negativity? Through their tardiness or absenteeism? By personal grooming and appearance that fails to meet company expectations? Are they angry, discouraged, uncooperative, disruptive in training sessions and meetings? Do they opt out of company social functions? Are they lethargic, apathetic, complacent, indifferent? Do they demonstrate a general lack of interest in customers, colleagues and the future success of your company?

Then, where do you start?

Yes, you’ve guessed it! With yourself.

First, ask yourself, what are the benefits you derive from your current state of mind and perception of your situation. What are the immediate and longer term costs of your current stance? Are they really worth it?

If you really want to change, start by taking full responsibility for engineering a different style of thinking and behaving. Immediately stop perpetuating your own ‘blame-others’ game. Force yourself to focus on what you, not others, can be doing to improve your situation.

Monitor and consciously choose to focus on what is positive in the situation before focusing on what is detrimental or disappointing. Constantly choose to focus on what you can do to recover quickly when things go wrong. If disappointing events or even disasters occur, choose to focus on what you can do to recover and invest energy in helping others re-energise and
re-focus.

The most profound way to produce your own positivity is to think deeply about what you really want in your life and in your work and career. What are you really passionate about? Set some compelling goals for yourself and chart out ways to achieve them. Remember you are not alone. Other people want to see you be
happy and succeed. Ask them for their help. Only by addressing your own degree of positivity, can you credibly start to influence the positivity of those on your team.

Your first step is to recruit positive and intrinsically optimistic individuals. Psychometric testing will help you. Ensure that new employees meet with early success through an inspiring induction experience and equip them with the job knowledge and skills that will form a foundation of self-confidence. Be clear about their
role and responsibilities and how essential and important they are to the organisation. Ensure that they feel secure enough to send out an SOS when they need help or if they feel overwhelmed.

Signal your zero tolerance position about gossiping. Deal with poor performers quickly – negativity starts to fester when effective employees see a manager unable or unwilling to take action.

Create many communication opportunities so people are fully informed. Establish forums for debate and disagreement so that unhappiness and frustration is out in the open. Be a shining role model of positivity. Let a strong undercurrent of optimism be ever present in all your dealings with your team. Notice and
praise effort and achievement.

Most importantly, continuously provide individuals with the most dynamic development and training opportunities, so that they are
equipped with the cognitive skills, self-awareness and motivation to take responsibility for their own positive mind-set.

Positivity is the pre-requisite to truly effective, distinguished customer service, that customers appreciate and admire. Delivering outstanding service requires a sincere and deep desire to contribute to another human being, to be the catalyst that creates a positive experience and outcome for the customer. It demands the ability to listen deeply, patiently, to think and act quickly and creatively.

Underpinning all of this is the conscience and intention of the individual to do the right thing for the customer and the organisation. This takes a high degree of personal responsibility and pride. Positivity is the initial and continuing source of responsibility and pride.