Let your Seth's be the best for your customers

Five years ago we bought a house and needed to get appliances. We had a great experience at a local appliance store with a salesperson named Seth. He offered his personal cell if we had any questions or concerns after the delivery. A year later we needed another appliance given a growing family, so we texted Seth planning meet him at the store. He knew our busy family situation and instead texted us pictures, links, reviews and personal opinions of the type of appliances we needed. Over the next four years we bought four appliances from Seth; all over text and then a phone call to give a cc at time of purchase.” What are the “Seth’s” in your organization saving you and your customers? What are they earning you?

Engaged and empowered employees are motivated to do the right thing for the customer and in return, they will hugely benefit your company. Consider these principles for increasing engagement and empowerment of your employees:
Have principle-based guidelines and not policies: If you as an employee are spending more than ~10% of your time grappling with “I’ll need to check my handbook”, “let me check with my manager” or “we’ve never done that before so I better not”, you’re probably not being flexible enough. Set strong flexible principle-based guidelines that give your team opportunities to work outside the box. There will always be outliers, but for the most part, a customer’s request is going to be reasonable and an empowered employee saying yes to it is going to increase engagement from both the employee and the customer.
Ask your employees what is getting in the way of them giving great customer service: Nobody knows what is working and what isn’t better than your engaged employees. Routinely ask for their feedback and create a forum where they can continuously share. This makes it even more important that your guidelines remain flexible and can adjust and morph to include the needed changes from time to time. It’s also a big win when they are already flexible enough for what your employee is recommending and you get to be the bearer of good news that “this is exactly the kind of stuff our guidelines were meant for; you go get ‘em”.
Review your customers’ feedback with your employees: the opportunity for your employees to be the voice of context for what their customers are saying helps them feel empowered and helps hold them accountable for feedback about themselves.
Reward out of the box and crazy ideas: How many appliance salespeople have had the foresight to take the opportunity to try and sell you an appliance over text? I know of exactly one. But what a difference that foresight made for a mom that didn’t have to drag kids to a store or a dad with a busy travel schedule. They will be loyal for years. Employees that are creative in the way they meet customers needs help raise the bar and expectations of all employees.