Leading Relationships on the Frontlines

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read about the practice in these articles:

 

"Do you need some employee engagement ideas or concepts? This free e-book has about 300 of them!  Welcome to the ABC book on Employee Engagement. I think you will be delighted to use this resource in your employee engagement efforts. We are so pressed for time that alphabetical lists like this make it easy to consider a range of employee engagement ideas.

We have a bonus, the 12th contributor, Angela Maiers, applied the concept to student engagement. As we are all learners this may also benefit you in the workplace too.

I encourage you to join and participate in the employee engagement network.

Visit us at www.employeeengagement.ning.com "

 

"Relationships drive sales. Relationships are built on customer experiences, and building relationships is a process, a set of actions, and not an event. And, through working with him, I came to appreciate that, to remain customer-centered, enterprises can lead customer relationships through frontline activities that involve and motivate associates."


"Building relationships is a process, a set of actions, and not an event," says George Reavis, founder of ThankingCustomers.com. He outlines his five-step process for building a continuous dialogue with customers:

 

"The contact point between your customers and your company is at the front door, at the front counter, on the frontline. And most of your frontline associates are very competent people who can do the work, but George Reavis warns that most companies fail to make the distinction between perfunctory performance and enthusiastic engagement. Here he offers tools for providing the right kind of motivating feedback to jumpstart a cycle of engagement between management, frontline employees and customers."

Everyday organizations are “working backwards” using hard managerial skills to empower those on the front lines of operations. Essentially giving them the tools to help them ask/answer for themselves the all-important question “How are we doing?” Why not do the same for softer leadership skills? Giving front-line managers a tool/activity for leading relationships by developing a secondary customer feedback through “asking” and sharing the answers to “How are we doing?”

I became a leadership coach after more than thirty years in just about every aspect of the Hospitality industry. When I started there were not many programs for managing customers. You demonstrated pride, service, enjoyment, appreciation, quality, passion, and intentions through daily operations and hoped customers returned.

The word relationships has reached buzzword status. Every enterprise has them and most view customer relationships as something to be managed. Here we explore a practice or innovative idea to approach the creation, fostering, and leveraging of an enterprises connections with associates, customers, partners, and clients. Introducing a user-centered approach to leading relationships from the frontlines of operations

In the early 1990s, I had an epiphany as I participated in a team taking part in an ongoing customer dialogue, which not only included customers but also associates and partners of the enterprise.

Even more amazing, this same dialogue extended to more than 1,500 other teams in the same enterprise and had been going on for more than 30 years! The practice spawned a team of people who were focused, learning and committed to customers, and a dialogue with those customers that was continuous.

A number of studies indicate that one third of associates are "engaged" in daily operations.  This is crucial for all group leaders because only these associates are high performers and will engage customers--critical for loyalty.  But how do group leaders know at any point in time where their associates are on the engagement continuum?  Even more important, how can group leaders keep them moving on the continuum toward full engagement?

 

 

What do you think? Your thoughts on the content and arguments developed in these papers would be much appreciated. Please contact George Reavis directly at feedback.

 

 

  

 

Build skills with these online Publications for Frontline Leaders (several for free)