Using tools to make the process easier.
Employees, especially customer service representatives, usually don’t like having to go out of their way to do something for a customer. It may be because they don’t have the time, it could be because they lack the dedication, or one of any other number of reasons. But, the point is – most employees don’t like to have their bosses make more work for them.
The best way to combat this attitude is usually to provide great tools that employees can use to make the process easier. The tools can be simple and just do one or two specific things or they can be monster tools that can run the world. The exact tool obviously depends on the task, who’s using it, and what it is being used for, but tools are almost always a great help. Well designed tools are usually such a great help because they just make things that might otherwise take a while go easier and faster.
Tools also have the potential to make processes more reliable and complete. A small company I worked with turned what used to be a form that employees would fill out into a simple tool that employees could use to fill out to save the same information. They not only saw the process get done faster and become easier, but also more noticed the data provided was more complete and more accurate. The simple tool forced the company’s employees to follow the right procedure and before the company knew it, people were doing just that.
And it can really be just that simple. The toolset you provide to your employees doesn’t have to be fancy and it doesn’t need to cost millions of dollars. It does need to be well thought out, though. It has to be tested by people of all levels and most importantly, it needs to be usable (which tends to mean fast and simple). If employees have a hard time using a particular tool, they won’t use it. When no one is using a tool, absolutely no one benefits from it.
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