Another key to empowering people is clearly defining what they are meant to do, what they should hope and, perhaps, expect to achieve. This is especially important when the employee is working within a staff of other service providers, as it helps to gain synergies from goal congruency across the team. The resulting cohesiveness can help to empower them to “pull their own weight,” a powerful motivator for many people, as well as ride a wave of camaraderie moving toward the same or similar goals.

Furthermore, service providers can ensure positive results, as Randy Pennington presents it in “Results Rule,” when there is “a set of organizational beliefs, assumptions, and values supporting a commitment to results, relationships both externally and internally, and accountability … mutual respect, cooperation, and a high degree of trust between individuals and their managers, teams and departments … [and] alignment of individual, team and departmental performance with the organization’s strategic business objectives.”

Posted by: Colin Mangham

I’ll admit I have an affinity for the word “empower,” and have even woven this into some of the brands I’ve built, including a bottled water product with the tagline “Empowered Drinking Water” (Perfect Water) and a j.v. partner utilizing the same core technology for home care and commercial cleaning systems, which promised that their “Empowered Water is truly enhanced water, electrolyzed and oxidized to create a powerful cleaning solution, without harmful toxins or chemicals” (Zerorez).

In my experience, particularly with franchise systems, one of the best ways to empower employees is to give them quality materials and training, and provide them an environment in which they can perform. We built a Zerorez (derivative of “zero residue”) service model around this, whereby the carpet cleaners were encouraged and even trained to view themselves more as technicians (not carpet cleaners) who service “clients,” and were empowered to deliver a higher level of quality.

“Dress for Success” is a common phrase in business vernacular in the States. With Zerorez, we helped implement a dress code for uniforms that helped them to look sharp and, to a degree, be sharp. This included clean, protective booties for their feet that they would slip over their shoes before they even walk into the client’s home. Immediately that helps to establish rapport and trust between the service provider and the customer, and those are the foundations upon which the employee can feel empowered even by the customers themselves to do a quality job that’s appreciated.

Posted by: Colin Mangham

Nordstrom department stores are often hailed as the pinnacle of retail customer service with, as their own website promises, a “commitment to an extraordinary shopping experience.” I think it’s primarily because the employees are empowered to make decisions without having to run to the backroom to “ask my manager” – in that time, at that critical moment, a dissatisfied customer might even leave the store and never come back.

These “moments of truth” often critically shape a customer’s perception of the company. I touched upon this in a previous blog regarding perceived quality being realized at the moment of truth, when the service provider and the service customer confront one another at retail. Bottom line, if employees are not empowered to perform to or above certain standards of service the opportunity in that moment of truth is lost.

By the way, while conducting a national research study for an apparel brand, we actually had a focus group respondent say, “Nordstrom? Yeah, they’ll let you return anything. They’ll take a dead chicken back!” That’s some pretty strong word-of-mouth, to say the least….

Posted by: Colin Mangham