Andrew Hill

First of all, we pay our employees to meet our expectations; that is the contract between both parties. If an employer wants employees to exceed expectations then a financial incentive to do so must be offered. Those who want it will strive to achieve it. Those that don't...well who cares? They have still achieved our expectations and done what is asked of them. Pizza parties and meals out is a cheap and disingenuous way of trying to get people to exceed. If an employer wants more than expected, then you have to reward people financially for excelling. Meeting expectations is exactly what they are paid to do, this article seems to suggest that to exceed expectations is the goal and possibly expected. It is not.

The best way of prioritising complaints is of course to assess the impact. The best way of assessing the impact and therefore the priority is to use 4 simple metrics; with 4 being the lowest and 1 being the highest priority to deal with, which are as follows: 4. Low urgency-low impact 3. Low urgency-high impact 2. High urgency-low impact 1. High urgency-high impact

It’s important to recognise that emotional intelligence is the ability to manage both your own emotions and tune into the emotions of the people around you. There are five key elements to high emotional intelligence; self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. Create safe spaces for people and lead by example. Creating a culture of openness, honesty and transparency where everyone can contribute and disagree (without fear of escalation) is hugely important. Being the calm, cool head in a crisis settles everyone else. Using people’s mistakes as learning curves for all, is a great way to build team cohesion, openness and trust. Never made a mistake? Then you’ve never had to make a decision!

It is not complicated. Customers are still... just people! Essential Skills 1. Active listening 2. Empathy 3. Problem-solving 4. Communication These 4 skills are all vital to good customer service and they are all traits that are inherent within each of us to varying degrees as human beings. Concentrate on these four skills, that we all of us already use day to day with our friends and families; bring them to the fore, as they are essential skills required in order to provide excellent customer service. Concentrate on the 4 above and the hard skills and training can follow.

As a leader, taking any business through a change process; it is imperative that you “the leader” clearly and simply articulate for everyone involved the personal benefit of that change. Once you have done that, then set out the benefit to the company; that the process will achieve and how each individual or group, will enable and contribute to that change.

Grasping the vision and goals of the change very quickly is absolutely imperative as a leader. Then making those points tangible and communicating them to the team, at speed... is equally as important. Most of all...identifying, articulating clearly and imparting the "what's in it for them" message is absolutely critical. It is then the leaders job to press on with and manage the process; keeping everyone on board by rewarding where appropriate, motivating when required and feeding back regularly.