A Customer Service Paradox
Frank J. Navran

Downsizing is a reality in nearly every organization. Even when there is no wholesale force reduction, these days almost every business is undergoing some form of restructuring and reengineering effort. The result is smaller, tighter-knit organizations, where each employee is expected to do more work, in less time, to higher standards and with fewer resources.

Those of us in the customer service business have not escaped this latest management strategy. And the impact on our service quality as well as our customers’ perceptions of that service quality cannot be ignored.

Unnamed Victims

There is no denying that service quality and the customers who receive it are among the unnamed victims of downsizing: whether the symptoms are longer lines, sitting on hold in the queue while waiting to talk to a “live” service representative or those hurried contacts with service providers whose every second is being measured.

Why does service quality suffer when an organization downsizes? Decision-makers often choose downsizing as a strategic initiative to control the spiraling costs of doing business. Yet they do not understand the investment paradox.

When organizations downsize it is common for them to get flatter and broader, to have fewer levels and wider spans of control. It is also common for individual employees, supervisors and managers to have more work to do and new and different work to do. This happens when the workload of those who have left the organization is redistributed and when new methods and technologies are introduced in order to gain efficiencies.

The Paradox

Having fewer people do the work creates a short-term cost savings to the organization. Yet having more and possibly different work to do represents a training need for many employees. Hence the investment paradox:

While total employee-based costs go down, the cost per individual employee should go up. If the organization is to realize the promise of doing more work and doing better work with fewer employees, then there is a need for training.

What normally happens however is that downsizing is accom-panied by a whole raft of cost cutting tactics. Almost invariably one of those tactics is to treat training as an unnecessary, or at least marginal, expense that the organization cannot afford in these trying times. And thus it gets eliminated.

However the very same people who call for a cutback in training expect their employees to learn new tasks and take on new responsibilities. They also expect managers and supervisors to facilitate their employees’ smooth transition in- to these new roles.

Yet the competencies required to successfully complete to-day’s job after downsizing may be significantly different from those required before the reallocation of responsibilities. There are four scenarios:

Cases For Training

In the first case an employee is doing exactly the same work as before, but is being asked to do more of it, and often to higher standards. Yet, with the organization’s newly expanded spans of control, the employee has less access to his or her supervisor for guidance and support. What this employee needs is training on how to develop new proficiencies as well as the self-sufficiency necessary to succeed with less oversight and support.

In the second case an employee may be doing the same task as before the downsizing, but is now using new technology or methodologies that allow him or her to do more work to higher standards. The introduction of new technologies or procedures requires training.

In case three the employee is being asked to do new and different work, perhaps taking on part of the work of a former colleague who is no longer there. Again, training is often needed before this employee can be expected to be effective in these new tasks.

There is also a fourth class of training that some organizations recognize. After downsizing we often see a dramatic increase in the number of hours worked, the pressures of performing to higher standards, and employee anxiety about doing what is required to meet these new demands. This calls for non-task specific training on the coping skills necessary to work in a new, pressure-filled, downsized environment.

To complicate these scenarios even further, management is often telling employees at the same time that:

• They are empowered to make more decisions.
• They are encouraged to take new risks.
• They are challenged to find new and better ways of doing the organization’s work.

Management needs to assist employees in meeting these demands as well as cope with the changes which brought them about. That often means a training investment.

Inventory

The first step in preparing employees for success in the downsized organization is to systematically inventory the competencies required for today’s redefined job. From that inventory supervisors and employees can assess the employees’ current competence and build individual development plans to ensure that each employee is optimizing the contribution he/she is making now. For each employee you should be able to identify:

• The skills and knowledge required for exemplary performance.
• The employees’ current skill and knowledge levels.
• What it will take to bring each employee to full competence.
• What else is required for that employee to be an exemplary performer.
• What you can do to help each employee realize that potential.
• What the organization is willing to do to assist each employee.

One great truth we face in all organizations is that even without the trauma of downsizing, every job will evolve to the point where the incumbent employee will need new skills and knowledge if he or she is to be effective.

Identify Emerging Needs

This would suggest that the next step in preparing employees for long term success is to identify emerging needs. What skills, not necessarily critical for success today, are likely to be essential in the near future and beyond. You and your employees should collaborate in developing “employability insurance.” These are the skills and competencies that will increase the probability that the employee will be employable in the future.

Finally, we cannot ignore the supervisors of customer service employees. They are often going through the same changes as those whom they supervise: doing more of the same work, doing new and different work, and doing it all to higher standards with fewer resources.

Not only are supervisors having to master their own evolving jobs, they are also being asked to learn two critical sets of skills which in the past might have received little more than lip service. These skills are coaching and counseling.

Coaching and Counseling

Coaching is the ability to identify those very specific ways in which the employee might better perform the specific skills needed to do the job. For example, how to better describe the benefits of a particular product option, how to close a sale, or how to diffuse a customer’s anger or resistance. This requires the supervisor to be a subject matter expert on how to perform the employees’ job as well as the most current procedures for doing that job faster and better. The problem is that too often today’s supervisor is not a subject matter expert on all aspects of the job. Their job, especially after downsizing, is more than likely to include responsibility for overseeing new and differ-ent work for which they themselves have had little or no formal training.

Counseling deals more with the employees’ motivation, morale and ability to work effectively with and through others. It is more intra- and inter-personal oriented. It may require the supervisor to listen insightfully as an employee describes his or her frustration with the apparent breach of loyalty inherent in the recent downsizing, or helping the employee understand the roots of their resistance to a new methodology or technology. It may include having to shift from supervising a group of employees to facilitating a team. These are human relations or psychological skills which the supervisor may not have had the opportunity or motivation to develop pre-downsizing.

As you can see the challenges in the post-downsized organization are very real, and their solutions include a training element. While training is not the total answer, neither can the organization afford to ignore training.

The Suggested Solution

The investment paradox not only clarifies the problem, it also suggests a solution. Organizations downsize, in part, to save people-related costs. Training is a people-related cost which should probably increase immediately following a restructuring, rightsizing, force reallocation or any other intervention that requires individual employees to do more, do it to higher standards and do it with fewer resources.

The failure to invest intelligently in employee training and development is a near certain guarantee that the promised benefits of downsizing will elude an organization. The key is to recognize that short-term investments in training are what allow organizations to realize the lon-term benefits of downsizing.

As customer service groups are restructured, as employees are being asked to do more with less, as organizations adopt new procedures and technologies to achieve their productivity and quality goals, employees at all levels must continue to learn.