The Other F-Word That’s Messing With Your Brand

A while ago, we looked at how friction grinds down employer brands through the daily assaults on process and productivity, and the generally punishing aspects of having to share space and limited air exchanges with other humans. In a similar vein, companies like Diamond Resorts, as explored on https://linxlegal.com/diamond-resorts/, navigate the challenges of maintaining a positive brand reputation while managing external pressures. Whether dealing with customer expectations or internal conflicts, the impact of friction—both internal and external—can significantly affect a brand’s long-term success and perception.

Following a terrible experience at a local restaurant, I am wondering if there isn’t a second F-word at work in the form of free-falling.

Free-falling is that part of a parachute jump when there’s a lot of gravity and not a lot of parachute happening. It’s meant to be exhilarating, and I’m sure it is if you intended to jump out of the plane just for fun. I would think it’s pretty terrifying in any other circumstance. Which brings me to my point: are we creating gaps our employees can fall into and take the brand with them?

Last week we joined another family at a local café for a quick dinner. This is a family-owned neighbourhood spot where you order at the counter and the staff brings your grub along a few minutes later. Orders were placed, seats were taken and quickly cutlery and beverages arrived.

Then the other family’s meals arrived. They looked fantastic. We were assured ours were close behind and we asked our friends to go ahead and tuck in. As they neared the half-way point of their meals we caught the eye of the young lady behind the counter and suggested we might like to see our food. “They’re plating it now,” she explained. As our friends finished up their meals, we were still waiting. Apparently, the plating was taking place in another city.

Eventually two of the four meals arrived, one of them stone cold. That diner went home to get a sandwich. An hour after we had ordered, the final two entrees were nowhere in sight and the server was alternately hiding in a storage room or folding napkins to avoid any sort of contact with our now fairly porcupine-like table. Still no apology, no explanation, no attempt at damage control, which was too bad because I was reporting the whole thing live on Facebook.

Finally, a wrap arrives and we suggest that the experience has been sub-optimal and perhaps a consideration should be made. A phone call is made instead. The server is instructed to refund some of the food but not the beer or the tip. We point out that the tip is pretty much no longer in play. Phone calls are made. When the final entrée arrives 90 minutes after ordering, we are no longer hungry and beyond interested in sticking around.

I spend my walk home on a call with the owner, who is explaining first that he is a lawyer and second that liquor laws where we live make it illegal to refund alcohol sales. Not my problem, I suggest. Reminding me a second time that he’s a lawyer, he tells me he’d rather have a legal fight with me than with the liquor regulator. I agree that I’m a much more pleasant person to go to court with over an $80 meal, but still can’t understand why I can’t have my tip back.

Exasperated, he reminds again that he’s a lawyer, and then asks me what I want. An apology and a refund. That’s all. He grunts an apology and agrees to leave the rest of the refund for me to pick up at the restaurant.

I’m pretty sure the server forgot to click submit on the order; an easy mistake. What’s a bit harder is telling your customer you screwed up and they’ll have to wait. What’s harder still is not owning the problem and letting it escalate while you hope that either a meteor strikes and gives us all something else to talk about or that we’ll stop being hungry.

Both of these are examples of letting an employee free-fall during a customer interaction. In the absence of a good role model or good guidelines or just some basic values about how your organization views its obligations to customers, inexperienced or unsupervised employees are pretty much on their own to figure out how to handle problems.

Where there is a demonstrated lack of empathy or respect, as was the case with our stubborn, grumpy lawyer-restaurateur, employees are stuck between an unacceptable exemplar and common sense. When the unacceptable exemplar signs your pay cheque, the odds are stacked against common sense. Thus, our server, whatever her instincts to the contrary, was more or less ordered to be rude, indifferent and defensive as the ground rushed at her ever faster.

That business owner knew we would push back about the tip, and likely the rest of the tab too, but he didn’t know (or didn’t care) that he was sending that poor server back to our table armed with nothing more than an argument she couldn’t possibly win. She had no rationale for why the beer and tip were excluded from the refund, and she clearly had no discretion to just make things right. This combination of little structure and no freedom add up to a giant free-fall for all concerned.

Of course, the problem with a free-fall isn’t the falling but the wet clean up required when we hit the ground. Each of these messy impacts splatters the market brand with, well, bits. Those are hard to scrape off after a while. What’s even harder to undo is the collateral damage to employee engagement, culture, leadership – in other words, the employer brand.

Lousy employer brands do little to help recruit smart, service-oriented folks who can solve problems, delight customers and whatever else is on your mission statement. Failing to do that pretty much guarantees your market brand and your business will end up as an unfortunate stain on a parking lot someplace.

What we need is a good balance between the friction of ridiculous policies and the complete absence of guidance around working through problems. I’d suggest, at a minimum:

• Define the discretion employees can apply to make things right for a customer – that can be a dollar amount or the promise that your manager has your back no matter what you do
• Create a culture where mistakes are learning opportunities (to a point) and where there is no risk in owning up and apologizing
• Hire or promote leaders who actually demonstrate how you want things done. Employees will treat customers the way their managers treat them. Not a hard thing to fix, even for a lawyer.
• Do a debrief after each problem and figure out what you can learn and what you can teach others about it
• Teach everyone to apologize until your business sounds like a Canadian subway train on a hot day

Oh, and make sure the final touchpointwith a customer at the end of a problem is as pleasant as possible. Like, say, tucking a little note into the envelope with the refund, or posting something on Facebook to let the world know you screwed up and learned something. Plus leave your lawyers out of it.

Related Posts (or not)

Why Your Customers’ Expectations Are Ruining Your Relationships
Why We Need to Choose Discretion Over Policies

BizMarketer is written by Elizabeth Williams
I help organizations build their brands through great conversations with employees and customers

Drop me a line at ewilliams(at)candlerchase.com
Follow me @bizmkter