Basketball teams are now tracking their performance immediately following a time out. The objective of course is to see improvement. More than other sports, basketball’s use of the time out can change the flow of a game. Why not in our business too?
The target can be any aspect of our business. As example and format, let's consider implementing a TIME OUT to improve customer service.
- Meet with our employees individually or as groups and with them develop a list of the very best practices that we can and should do to maximize our customers’ experience with us.
- Condense these ideas into a brief and objective handful of statements. Such as:
1. phone is answered at the first ring
2. standard greeting to be,
“Welcome to ABC, my name is Steve, how can I help you today?”
3. clutter in and around our work areas is a nuisance and a distraction
-- let’s minimize it.
4. outside interruptions are a nuisance and a distraction – let’s minimize them:
-- hold all personal calls and focus on the business at hand.
5. breathe and compose ourselves.
-- Shed the days stress and grief. Lighten up.
-- Applaud each other and say please and thank you … please.
- Create a “cheat sheet” with the above best practices and distribute to each employee.
- Review the “cheat sheet” with everybody and introduce to them that from time to time, we can and will call a “time out”. This can be once a day or once a week. When called, all of us are to refresh our memories as to what these best practices are and execute them immediately after the time out is called….for as long as we can continue to do so.
And thus the best practices are defined and the time out procedure is too. At any team player’s discretion, a time out can be called and we will all know what we are to do.
Change does not occur after a single reading of a new event. Change takes a couple of tries before it becomes ingrained. This method provides us a couple of tries and eventually, the change will become the norm.
