The Satisfaction Formula – Empower

In this post, authors Dave Sweet and Jayna Sweet explore the benefit EMPOWERMENT adds to the customer experience.

Have you ever been in a situation with a customer where, say, things weren’t necessarily perfect? Perhaps they had an appointment to see you, but they weren’t in the system correctly, or maybe you spilled a drink all over their feet. Whatever the case may have been, most likely those of us who have worked in customer service can recall an interaction that seemed to be going south. What did you want to do in that situation? Did you want to give them a discount or comp their order? Did you want to run to another store to grab the item they were looking for, but you were out of? Did you want to give them an additional service free of charge? If so, congratulations, you were thinking above-and-beyond! You were ready to recover big and exceed expectations.

However – a lot of times we may want to do things to go the extra mile or fix a problem we’ve had, and yet don’t do it. Why?

If you didn’t end up doing the extraordinary thing you’d thought of – why didn’t you? Were you afraid you’d get in trouble for giving something away for free? Were you required to get management approval and your manager wasn’t available? Were there no systems in place to allow you to even try? Unfortunately, that is a mistake lots of companies make. They don’t empower their employees to make decisions that transcend the norm and exceed customer expectations.

Ponder this piece of wisdom from Theodore Roosevelt:

“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.”