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The lack of great customer service nowadays is a result of the lack of great management. The emphasis in today's workplace is generally on quantity: churning out the most products, handling the most calls in the call center. In the United States, workers are driven to stay at the office beyond 40 hours each week. There is a sense of guilt or fear for most workers when they think about taking a vacation. Workers have no "safe" way of resolving the stress of dealing with unreasonable corporate mandates, quotas, and inept management. This unresolved conflict with management translates into a disregard - and even a disrespect - of the customer.

The customer can represent the root cause of all the pain a manager or company puts an employee through. I recently witnessed this "transference" at a major consumer-electronics store. Another customer was trying to find someone to help him with some product information. He politely approached the customer service desk and asked for assistance. The manager called a salesman to come up front to assist the customer. Upon arriving at the customer service desk, the manager proceeded to tear into the salesman for not being visible and available for customer's questions. This reprimand was delivered in front of the customer. When the salesman was finally free to assist the customer, he was cool and terse with the gentleman. The manager destroyed the opportunity for the employee to provide customer service. He made the customer a target for a humiliated employee.

Bad management affecting customer service levels isn't just a problem in the retail sector. Business-to-business firms also have these same problems. Service providers or agents are pushed to churn out high volumes of reports/claims/data because pricing is based on quantity. There is little or no time allowed to review quality in some of these environments. Managers give lip service to the idea of accuracy, but they more likely to reprimand someone for not meeting quota over sending out sloppy work. The client liaison is left to face the angry customer when quality is low. Management's demand for high quantity keep quality secondary. Management forces the quota issue, but they are not the ones who necessarily deal with the angry customer who suffers due to this management style. The employee is in a lose-lose situation where they dread dealing with the customer - so they try to keep that interaction to a minimum.

To help stem the tide of poor customer service, management must take up the call to provide good service to their internal customers - employees. Employees who have servant leaders as managers will be more likely to act as servant leaders to their customers.

Learn more about this author, Stacy Jackson.
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