I have met many managers in the thirty-eight years since I started work. Some of them have come up through the ranks of the company they work for and have an understanding of the front line of the business. Others are university graduates who sometimes have no more than a rudimentary understanding of what goes on at the ‘coalface’. There are those who have been ‘brought in’ to deliver on a certain task – for example, increasing sales, cutting waste, managing change, improving systems.

I firmly believe that the companies that will be successful in the future will be those where every manager has a thorough understanding of what goes on at the customer interface and of their personal impact on that interface. I once worked for a company where I was involved with the training for a project that involved a new I.T. system. I was attending lots of meetings, and I found myself constantly interrupting the I.T. project manager when he was making suggestions that I knew would have a negative impact on customer service at the front line. His response? ‘Oh, we’ve all heard this stuff about ‘delighting the customer’ he said ‘but no-one takes it seriously’. His attitude was that the staff would get used to the new system, which was designed to save the company money. What happened was that the new system saved the company money in one area and lost it money in two other areas. Customers had to queue longer to be served, which led to some of them walking away and spending their money with the competition, staff were frustrated and took time off sick – even in some cases left the company, which exacerbated the situation. (Great management word that – exacerbated!) Replacing a member of staff cost that company at least £2,000 a time and covering sickness costs money too. Even worse is sickness that isn’t covered, because that results in lost customers too.

The net result was that although money was saved on that quarter’s bottom line, the intangible costs of staff and customer dissatisfaction damaged the company’s brand in the eyes of its customers, and eventually the project was scrapped. So, the important news for managers is that you ignore the views of your staff and customers at your peril. And guess who knows how your customers feel? Well, your customer service staff will have a good idea, as they talk to them all day – otherwise there are some great mystery shopping people out there!