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The “broken windows”
theory was first put forth by criminologists in the 1980s
after police noticed that the crime rate in a neighborhood
would go up if seemingly minor problems, such as broken
windows, were not corrected.
If an unused building
had a broken window that went unmended, it wasn’t too long
before a second window was broken, with the rest of the
windows quickly following. The theory was that
small signs of unattended disorder were interpreted as either
no one noticing or no one caring whether windows were
broken. The
perception seemed to be that if no one cared about the
condition of the building, anything could be done to it. Small signs of
disorder, if not attended to, seemed to pull for an attitude
that encouraged more disorder.
In a business,
“broken windows” are any part of your customer’s experience
with your company that is not as it should be. On an airplane, if the
tray table is dirty or there is trash on the floor, these
things are “broken windows.” You probably don’t
think, “Someone on the cleanup crew missed this.” Instead, your first
thought is likely to be, “If this is the way they take care of
the aircraft’s interior, then how well do they take care of
the engines?”
If you call a plumber
to repair a leaky faucet and the guy they send out is unshaven
and has a strong body odor, he is a “broken window.” He may do a heck of a
job on your leaky faucet for a reasonable price, but a lot of
people would say, “We aren’t calling that plumber again. I just don’t like the
look (and smell) of him.”
An example that is
closer to home involved the remodel of our house several years
ago. The project
involved major destruction and then reconstruction over
several months.
It turned out well and we were pleased with the contractor who
did the work for us. Then we began having
flat tires on our cars -- five of them in a two week period
due to nails and screws that had accidentally been dropped on
our gravel driveway.
When I mentioned this
to the contractor, he said they had forgotten to “magnetize”
the driveway -- that is, roll a large magnet over the driveway
several times to pick up any nails, screws or other
tire-puncturing metal that may have accidentally fallen on
it. This was a
small oversight, given the size of the project, but it was a
“broken window” that left us with a bad attitude toward the
contractor.
Even though you are
working hard to provide quality products and good customer
service, “broken windows” – details that may seem small to you
but are important to your customers – can mean you have more
one-time customers than repeat customers. And the frustrating
thing about your company’s “broken windows” is that they can
be difficult to spot from where you sit.
Even asking customers
for their feedback isn’t always successful. Have you ever had bad
service in a restaurant and, when the manager came by and to
ask how everything was, rather than make a scene, you said,
“Fine. Everything
was just fine.”
And the “broken window” of poor service remained broken
because the manager couldn’t see it and you felt uncomfortable
pointing it out to him.
Cost Of The Problem
Broken windows –
small but untidy mistakes due to inattention, fatigue or a
lack of motivation – cause dissatisfied customers. Our customers expect
that we will swiftly and completely attend to not only the
major parts of the product or service that we provide them
with, but that we will also attend to the smaller aspects of
the sale, the small acts that say to the customer, “You are
worth extra time and attention on our part to completely
satisfy your original interest in our product or
service.” Without
the small touches, such as a sincere smile or a “Thank you”
that doesn’t sound faked, you may lose what could have been a
repeat customer.
How To Fix Your Broken
Windows
First, become a
customer to your business. You can’t fix what you
don’t know about, so try to experience your business the way
your customers do. Call your business’s
main phone number and ask to speak with someone. How was your call
handled? Did the
person answering the phone sound pleasant and helpful? If not, he or she may
be a “broken window.” Walk into your
reception area and look at it as if you were seeing it for the
first time. Is it
clean? Is it
welcoming?
Walk through your
company’s work areas. Are they neat and
tidy? I’m not
advocating neatness for its own sake, but work areas should be
neat enough that mess and clutter don’t interfere with
workflow.
Second, look for
procedures that may have become more important than your
customers.
Standard operating procedures provide consistency to the work
flow, but sticking to them shouldn’t result, however
inadvertently, in inconvenience for your customers. How many times have
you heard, “For your convenience we are changing [fill in the
blank]…” but the change results in your immediate
inconvenience.
It is all too easy to
look at the fact that we have attended to the big parts of our
service and product and use that effort as justification for
feeling that we are “basically done with that customer for
now.” That sense
of completion can result in the unintentional slippage of the
details that, though small, are important to the customer’s
satisfaction with your product and service. These “little things”
can begin to unravel your customer’s regard for your
company.
Little Things Can Mean A
Lot
I was in New Orleans
a few years ago and found a very nice shop in the French
Quarter that sold pralines, that delicious combination of
pecans, brown sugar and butter that is to die for. I purchased a couple
of boxes to send to various relatives (and a couple to keep)
and as I was paying for them the cashier picked up a small
candy bar from the counter display and handed it to me with my
change. “What’s
this?” I asked.
“It’s lagniappe,” the cashier replied. “That’s Creole for a
little something extra in appreciation of your
business.”
Why should we go the
extra mile for our customers? There are two
reasons: first,
because that is what we really appreciate on those occasions
when we are the customer. Second, because
business should be more than the merely toil for money; it
should be an opportunity to demonstrate excellence in what we
do. As Grandpa
used to say, “Anything worth doing is worth doing
right.”
Remember, People are not your most
important asset!
The RIGHT People are!
To hire the best, test!
To reveal management potential, test!
To diagnose
problem behavior, test!
Best regards,
Kurt G. Helm, Ph.D.
Phone Toll Free
800-886-4356
Email: khelm@helmtest.com
Website: http://www.helmtest.com/
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© 2007, Kurt G. Helm, Ph.D. All rights
reserved. You are
allowed to use material from this newsletter in whole or in
part provided that you include attribution in the following
form: “By Kurt G.
Helm, Ph.D., of Helm and Associates, Inc. Please visit our
website at http://www.helmtest.com/ for
more information about how to avoid hiring mistakes by using
pre-employment testing as part of the applicant evaluation
procedure.”
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