By our nature we as humans have a defense mechanism built into us for survival. We have the inborn desire to survive and will do whatever we feel we need to do. However this is often driven by emotion and not logic. Once we know this we can then begin to break down the barriers and find softer ways to approach problems. Always be focused on the solutions and not the problems.
When I used to manage for pizza hut I was always amazed at the reaction of my cooks when a customer who complain. Pizza Hut always had a very liberal customer service policy, if a customer felt there was something wrong with his pizza then our attitude was there is something wrong with his pizza so we would make him another one. It always astounded sometimes when I would ask a cook to do a remake. Often time they would stand there and argue with me for 5 minutes that there was nothing wrong with the first one. My response was always the same, “it doesn’t matter what the first one looked like just make another one and get back to work”. These cooks were not punished or reprimanded for these customer complaints; it didn’t affect their wages or shift lengths. It really had no effect on their life whatsoever despite the fact that they now had one more pizza to make. They would just stand their arguing with me about the initial quality and waste time. The come the end of the shift I would always get the same excuse if some of the important tasks were not completed. “Chuck I didn’t have time to get that done”, as I have always said we all have the same number of hours in the day, it is what we choose to do with them that matters.
CB
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Chuck, it seems to me that the cooks are taking the complaint as a personal afront. The management opportunity in this situation seems to be one where the manager would help the cook(s) understand that the complaint was not a personal attack. When the cooks can come to the realization that this is the case, they are more likely to simply produce a replacement pizza. Until that occurs, we're likely to see them continue to engage in behaviour(s) that block them from moving forward.
-PvP.
PVP,
Thank you for the remark, I think that you are very correct in your assesment. I do have a question for you you in this regard, do you feel as though age would have an impact on the behavior? In this case the cooks were generally between the ages of 16-20. Would someone with more life experience react differently or was it more an automatic response to the situation as a whole?
Post a Comment