Credit: ©Depositphotos/Jim_Filim
Craig Padoa at Customer Think has been writing about the drawbacks of a Toxic Corporate Culture. Many companies fail to realize that their culture – which is always top-down – affects everything in their organization. When I managed mainframe accounts for IBM I could tell you what the management style of upper management was by the way customer service and lower management interacted with me.
In toxic companies, everyone was so afraid of being disciplined
that they were unwilling to make any decisions and front-facing
employees had no authority to actually provide customer support.
On top of that they were often extremely unreasonable. More than once at one account I had I went into the manager’s office, closed the door, and asked if he would like to be someone else’s account because he had filed unwarranted complaints: once for my arriving on site in 42 minutes in the middle of the night (I lived 40 minutes away) and another time for not coming right away for a minor issue that was deferred by the system’s operator as non-urgent.
These types of companies have what I call a “Kick the Dog” philosophy of management where each level blames and abuses those beneath them – and then they treat both vendors AND CUSTOMERS the same way. Just look at how front-facing employees treat customers and you’ll know what type of upper management that business uses.
If a company’s employees can act on their customer’s behalf they have an empowered culture. If they can’t – they do not no matter how many presentations they schedule trying to convince the rank and file they do.
Are your managers and staff performing up to par? Do you want to provide better customer service? You may want to check into additional training. Here are some training resources: