Incentive - February 2008 - (Page 35)

Here’s how three companies entwine and motivation to boost customer engagement By Julie Barker empowerment and reduce turnover Ohio–based Peppers & Rogers Group, a division of incentive giant Carlson Marketing. “That’s the bad news. The good news is that if I’m able to help all my people make decisions that are governed by what’s best for the customers and the shareholders at the same time, that’s going to be very difficult for my competitor to copy.” Rogers and her partner, Don Peppers, has a new book due out from Wiley this month, Rules to Break and Laws to Follow, arguing that “the climate of engagement is really imperative to the future of your business,” engagement being closely related to empowerment. These days companies need to “build a culture where the guidance comes from ‘the way we do things here,’ ” rather than from rules, she says. Companies with a successful culture of empowerment work at maintaining it. This involves recruiting people who can make decisions and live with the results. It also requires training. Ritz-Carlton, for example, trains every single employee worldwide every day, using a start-of-shift 15-minute meeting called “the lineup” to remind them of its service values. Management must give the empowered employees the tools to reinforce their decisions. Below, Incentive profiles three companies to show how empowerment works in three very different environments. A t the Park Ridge Hospital in Hendersonville, N.C., Customer Service Manager Camy Horrell is leading a new program that gives every employee the power, the right and the tools to fix the kinds of glitches that make patients’ blood pressure soar—things like waiting two hours for a test because equipment is down. People who would have been hot under the collar chill out when they get a small-denomination gift card and an apology. And the associates love it because they’re able to solve problems on the spot. Since the program kicked off January 1, 2007, the comments from customers have been excellent, and so have the hospital’s scores on the Gallup Organization’s customer service survey. Park Ridge focuses its program on what’s known as “service recovery”—the act of resolving a problem immediately to bring a disgruntled customer back into the fold, smiling. Other companies empower employees to design their own jobs (a route to innovation), to anticipate customer needs (a surefire route to customer retention), even to stop an assembly line and fix a problem (a route to zero defects). Implementing a culture of empowerment from scratch is not easy. “It’s very difficult,” says Martha Rogers, Ph.D., a founding partner of Bowling Green, Gold-Standard Service In the hospitality industry, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co.’s service is legendary. A chef at the Ritz-Carlton in Bali called his motherin-law in Singapore and asked her to go out and buy special eggs and milk, not available locally, for a guest whose son had food allergies, then to get on a plane and deliver them to the resort, which she did. In the eyes of the guest, the chef was a hero, providing a service that went way above and beyond what any customer could reasonably expect. Now he’s a role model too. His story was shared with all 33,000 Ritz-Carlton employees to give them inspiration. “Wow” stories of service like his are read aloud every Monday to give those who work at Ritz-Carlton an understanding that they work among extraordinary people who do extraordinary things when the opportunity presents itself. Empowerment is promised to every employee as one of the company’s 12 service values. “Number nine is, ‘I am involved in the planning of the work that affects me,’ ” says John Timmerman, vice president of quality and program management at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, in Chevy Chase, Md. “Everything we do has got to pass the employee promise test,” says Diana Orek, vice president global learning and director incentivemag.com | February 2008 | Incentive | 35 http://incentivemag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Incentive - February 2008

Incentive Magazine - February 2008 Editor’s Note: Archie and the Boys In The News Cover Story: On The Ball Incentives Incentive Primer: How to Use Sporting Events Incentive Interview: Jim Avery on Doing the Right Thing Employee Empowerment Motivates and Pays Dividends Hospitals, Nurses Win With Flexible Scheduling Legal Ease: Safety Programs and Unions Case Study: The Weitz Company Retains Its Boomers Potentials: Here and Now Star Power in the Kitchen Awards: Gift Card Trends for the New Year Travel News The Manhattanization of Las Vegas Classics Renewed: Monaco and France Advertiser Index Off The Cuff: Tumi’s Mike Landry

Incentive - February 2008

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