Yesterday, I went for my regular, monthly haircut and this time chose a different hair dresser from my usual one. For the first few minutes the dresser was talking to me, enquiring how my day was, wanting to check what my expectations were and also about where i lived.
Couple of minutes in, one of his colleagues walked in and they both started having a conversation about something that was common between both of them, totally ignoring me. Though, I think that the result of the hair cut was better than I expected, I don’t think I will be going back to the hair dresser again as I didn’t feel that I belonged there.
It was then did i miss my regular dresser. He was always concerned about me, always talking to me, about something that he is experiencing & asking for advice, enquiring about my life, talking politics, weather or something that involved me in the conversation. I did enjoy the engaged conversations, which I did not realize until I had the experience yesterday.
Though, I believe the employee engagement is critical, my experience teaches me that when there is a customer involved, complete customer engagement, is more important that employee engagement.
So, do you know if your frontline employees are more interested in talking among themselves or do they really engage with their customers? Even a small improvement in the engagement levels can have a dramatic increase in loyalty.
Do you agree? Do you have a story about how you were engaged or ignored by an employee and how did you feel about that incident? Pls share the story with us and continue the conversation.
Thank you for writing on this topic. I agree totally with your thoughts on engagement. There is nothing that irritates me more than the employee side bar “personal” conversations when customers need help or are sitting and listening to a conversation that does not involve them. I refect it in the tip and also “coach” them to be more successful.
Thanks for reading the post Holly & for your kind words. These are simple things that does not take ages to fix or cost a lot to fix, but can have a significant impact on the perception of the customers.