Encourage Bad News

[Joe Marconi]

The other day, one of my service advisor’s came to my office to discuss the past week. We made an agreement that we would meet in private at least once a week to discuss his successes and challenges, and also discuss ways to improve our service. After telling me all the good stuff, he informed me of a situation where he dropped the ball, which resulted in a very upset customer.

 

My initial thoughts were anger and disappointment. The last thing we need these days are unhappy customers. But, thankfully the years have taught me a few things about employee behavior and employee management.

 

I remained calm and thanked him for bringing this up and we discussed ways to correct the situation. I told him that while we need to celebrate the success stories, it is crucial to our long term success to admit when things have gone wrong. I made a bigger deal about him coming clean, than the successes he had that week.

 

If I were to erupt in anger, he would have shut down. Also, he would not come to me the next time we had a customer issue. By thanking him and praising him for being honest, he now knows that people can make mistakes, and that we will work together to correct the problem.

 

No one wants to hear bad news, but it’s a lot better than not knowing. What you don’t know, you can’t correct. And that’s a recipe for disaster.

 

[UsedTireShop]

How would you go about keeping the customer?

Is this something the service adviser should do or is this something the owner should do?

[KMS]

How would you go about keeping the customer?

Is this something the service adviser should do or is this something the owner should do?

If the service advisor wasn't able to calm the customer the owner should get involved to see if he/she could salvage the relationship with the customer.

[mspecperformance]

Sometimes you just need another person to ease the tension.

[Shopcat]

^{It takes a lot of candor and integrity for an employee to do that. It says a lot about them, and the fact that you have created an environment where you get all the news, not just the good stuff. Kudos on having such a good relationship with the folks that work for you.}

[Joe Marconi]

^{It takes a lot of candor and integrity for an employee to do that. It says a lot about them, and the fact that you have created an environment where you get all the news, not just the good stuff. Kudos on having such a good relationship with the folks that work for you.}

 

Thanks for those kind words. I have to admit, it is not easy. And, it is a struggle to maintain the right environment. But, if we "Kill the Messenger", we will never know how to improve.