Several months ago, I decided to get fitted for a new set of golf clubs. My golf coach, Bryana, suggested it was time to upgrade, since club technology has improved dramatically since I bought my last set five years ago.
She arranged to join me for a fitting day at my golf club. After about an hour of trying different clubs, we settled on a new set and placed the order. I wasn’t given any paperwork or shipping details, but I didn’t think much of it. This was my first time having clubs custom-fitted, and I assumed, incorrectly, that everything was taken care of.
The following week, I started wondering when the clubs would arrive. No one seemed to know. By then, Bryana had moved to another location, and I found myself making multiple phone calls and sending emails to staff at the club just to track down the order. The process was disorganized, and to make matters worse, the manufacturer ended up shipping the wrong clubs. I eventually received the correct set, nearly six weeks later.
Around that time, I met up with Bryana for a lesson and told her about the experience. She mentioned that the same individual who handled my fitting had worked with another one of her clients earlier that week, and that client had also had a bad experience. It wasn’t the same issue, but the outcome was the same: dissatisfaction.
A few weeks later, I went in for another lesson, and the first thing Bryana said was, “Remember the guy who fitted your clubs? He just got fired.”
I laughed and said, “How you do anything is how you do everything.” It was clear my experience wasn’t an isolated incident. Poor customer service rarely is.
I asked Bryana whether, deep down, she had sensed there was a problem when we worked with him. She admitted that she had. But like many of us, she had rationalized it away. Maybe he was having a bad day. Maybe it was a one-off.
Here’s the thing: When someone truly understands customer service, a bad day doesn’t show. They mask it and put the customer first.
How often have you dealt with a performance or attitude issue and avoided confronting it? You tell yourself the person has something going on. Or, more honestly, you don’t want to deal with the discomfort of addressing it.
When you don’t confront the real issue early, it doesn’t disappear. It festers. And the person with the performance problem begins to assume their behavior is acceptable, because it’s being tolerated.
I’ve been guilty of this myself. I can still recall people in my produce company whose attitude or performance was clearly an issue, yet I avoided confronting them for far too long, if I ever did at all.
What happened? Other employees started leaving. One by one, over the course of about six months, an entire team resigned. Each person gave a different reason for leaving. It wasn’t until I stepped back and looked at the whole picture that I realized the real cause: I had tolerated the wrong person for too long.
So ask yourself this: Do you have a performance or attitude problem in your organization that you’ve been avoiding? Are you hesitating because you’re afraid that person might quit?
If so, consider the alternative. What’s worse — that one person leaving, or the rest of your team eventually walking out in frustration?
Listen to your gut. Most of the time, you already know when someone is a performance or cultural problem. Instead of kicking the issue down the road, confront it.
How you do anything is how you do everything.