Policy-practice gaps occur substantially, because of:
- Organisationally induced distortion in perception of employees’ self-interest
- Overly obsessive pursuit of quantitative targets alone
- Absence of rigorous culture of discipline
- Mistaken notion that by outsourcing a task a company has also outsourced its responsibility towards the customer
- Lack of intense organisational communication that should end up in visible change of behaviour
- Knowledge-at-the-point-of-action is what empowers the most
- Good complaint management is the heart of customer relationship management
- Quality of responsiveness impacts customer satisfaction the most
- Power of position must give way to power of purpose
Organisations can get schizophrenic when behaviour of many employees reflects apathy, emotional disengagement and lack of initiative denting the quality of company’s responsiveness to its customers. The core learning from this research backed book is that the attitudinal change in employees’ behaviour begins to take place progressively because of organisational dynamics at play in various areas of operations. Some of the conscious approaches which result in practices drifting from policy are:
- Overly obsessive pursuit of highly stretched top and bottom line figures and the other related number-targets alone
- Organisational structure not in line with declared policy; power of purpose overruled by power of position
- Lack of conviction that a principal company can outsource only a task but by no means it can shun its responsibility towards the customer
- Failure to ensure that the employees are constantly kept knowledge-empowered at the point of action
- Lack of realisation that unless it ends up in change of to the desired behaviour a communication has not served any purpose
- Diluted focus in some parts of the company to act on the dictum: complaint management is the heart of customer relationship management’
- Tendency of some people to ignore the fact that quality and speed of responsiveness is the single most important factor to achieve a high degree of customer satisfaction
- Absence of a ‘culture’ that calls for discipline in thought and in action. It demands that violaters of company’s values or systems must be dealt with suitably. Inaction on the part of the management can be highly de-motivating
- Lack of understanding of the phenomenon that superior customer service can be delivered only by emotionally motivated employees willing to put in strive effort in performing their jobs