In today’s competitive landscape, effective leadership is essential for enhancing employee engagement & driving customer satisfaction in the customer care sector

Shyama Prasad Subudhi

The other day, I stumbled upon one beautiful question from none other than the great management expert, Peter Drucker, who asked between ‘doing the things right’ and ‘doing the correct thing?’ While both answers are seemingly correct, the latter has some rightful explanation. In a business environment, both things happen, but prudence lies in doing the right thing while aiming at what the consumer or the end user wants at the end of the day.

While on the subject, it also reminds me of another famous saying by none other than our legendary late Ratan Tata, who used to say, “I do not believe in taking right decisions…I take decisions and then make them right. So always believe in your ability & efforts.” With a delicate analysis, this is an emphatic ‘YES’ to doing the right thing.

The intrinsic quality of a leader in any organization, in every section and every location, drives him towards the final accomplishment of the task ahead, following this basic principle. Otherwise, organizations will perish away not by any sudden misfortune but by gradual suffocation due to their wrong approach when there are no takers for the supposedly best products produced by the best people under their arms.

This reminds me of a classification penned by some management scientists. They have categorized all the employees under four different buckets:  stars, workhorses, problem children, and deadwood. Going by this, organizations should aim to fill the buckets more with star performers and simultaneously adopt both top-down and bottom-up policies to aim at doing the right thing at the right time by the right set of employees.

This will happen by having the right leaders in the hierarchical ladder where leaders understand and do not hate mirrors which of course just reflect them. Leaders must know how to communicate properly by having the right conversations with their employees to relate, connect, and listen well enough. Someone rightly said that a leader leads by example and carries their employee fraternity along by motivating and inspiring them not only on fundamentals for the right approach to get on to the root cause analysis but also on the right work-life balance to get an auto drive from within towards accomplishment of any daunting task.

In a little exaggeration, I need to quote here the nice narration about work-life balance by Gary Keller concerning 5 balls. He termed Work as a rubber ball, which, if dropped, will bounce back, whereas family, health, friends, and integrity are other 4 glass balls that, if dropped, will get scuffed, nicked, and perhaps be shattered irrevocably. A leader in a team ushers the team to walk far by binding them together. Once these basic tenets are in place, employees in an organization can do better R&D of consumer behavior/queries as internal customers. Organizations do not change. People do, and individuals do.

A leader in a customer care function needs to involve its employees in process standardization to get closer to customers in terms of data /trust/cost. This reminds me of the MD, Tata Motors, who would often visit customers in truck unions to obtain raw feedback from the horse’s mouth. In parallel, customers meet, visit manufacturing plants, invite customers through free check-up campaigns, offer them many value-added services, and visit customer locations by employees in a customer care function can be organized to get closer to customers. With this, employees can find new insights /ideas/strategies to take the brand in a new direction.

Most consumers use external agencies to do such research.  However, while external agencies can give a broad-based idea about the areas for improvement, they cannot bring in those perspectives like feedback about service areas concerning shabby reception, use of special tools during the repair of a product in a workshop, etc. Hence, there is a need to focus on the core areas of its internal customers-employees.

The toughest question faced by business leaders today is: How do I separate my brand from others? They want to come up with insights that flow from the needs, wants, hopes, and aspirations of customers. Employees as internal customers can provide more valuable data than any research agency.

Though many organizations are hiring house multi-national consulting consumers to do an in-house study for improvement and betterment of customer service delivery, it sometimes does not yield much harvest as the solution is already sheltered inside the employees’ minds and needs to be explored and exploited. The senior management, first of all, needs to appreciate and accept this and then systematically implement the business excellence management system and the TQM techniques for efficacious service delivery.

(The author was a senior executive in automobile sector. Views expressed are personal.)

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

10 COMMENTS

  1. Excellent and to the point as well. These bolt-on salient features of management skills and development is necessary and will contribute towards around growth .

  2. Leadership concept is beautifully explained by Mr Subudhi in his own imitable style.. His vast experience of leadership in Tata motors is in built to his article… God bless him with more n more of such articles

  3. Very well written!
    Leadership in any organisation needs a broad vision overlooking a skewed one. Ratan Tata is a real visionary and I watch him keenly and marvel at how seamlessly he managed to stay afloat for such a long time. Narration by Gary Keller on work life balance giving a just example is superb.
    Your comments on customer care/service/satisfaction are apt and time-tested.
    Overall, it is a good write-up.

  4. The In-depth Analysis made by Mr. Subudhi in his Article as to how the Customer Care & Satisfaction can be optimally ensured by the Leaders / Senior Management to simultaneously bring in superlative business growth for the Company is really thought-provoking.

    The Valuable Suggestions made by Shri Subudhi to prudently explore and synthesize the views of Internal Employees with that of the feedbacks obtained from the Hired Consultancy Organisation(s) in this regard to develop products so as to ensure the better Customer Satisfaction alongside the business growth seem to be quite pragmaic.

    I wish Mr. Subudhi keeps penning such exploratory & ground-breaking management ideas / models for bettering Businesses as well as to usher in better Customer Satisfaction to finally promote the Societal Well-being.

  5. Your point of views and knowledge insights on the role of leadership in employee engagement and customer satisfaction are truly valuable. Also I appreciate the way you’ve articulated the connection between effective leadership and a thriving customer care environment. Your points on empowerment, communication, and a customer-centric culture resonate strongly, highlighting the essential qualities that drive success in this sector. Absolutely nice on capturing these key aspects so effectively. Specially, Your ability to highlight the direct impact of effective leadership—through empowerment, communication, and a customer-centric approach—demonstrates a strong understanding of the customer care sector too.. 👌

  6. Explanation of leadership in simple language with a great depths in meaning. It has given border view and importance on each point to understand. These are fundamentals, which are overlooked by common people. Well covered by Mr S P Subudhi.

Comments are closed.