Many busi­ness­es spend months plan­ning hol­i­day pro­mo­tions. They in­vest in mar­ket­ing cam­paigns, sea­son­al mer­chan­dise and at­trac­tive dis­counts. Yet, poor front­line eti­quette, an over­looked fac­tor, can qui­et­ly un­der­mine all of that ef­fort.

There is a su­per­mar­ket chain in T&T that un­der­stands this re­al­i­ty. To this chain, the check­out counter is a mo­ment of truth and a touch­point that mat­ters to the cus­tomer. In many cas­es, it’s the tail end of a jour­ney that may ex­tend to the car park, if the cus­tomer is dri­ving. So, the think­ing is, “Let’s make it mem­o­rable!!”

Imag­ine the im­pact if more busi­ness­es em­braced this mind­set. There are far too many check­out lines where front­line em­ploy­ees are self-ab­sorbed ei­ther in per­son­al con­ver­sa­tions, or in rants about man­age­ment. Makes one won­der if any­one in man­age­ment is pay­ing at­ten­tion to the inat­ten­tion be­ing dis­played by their staff.

It seems to me that late­ly, this ex­treme­ly un­ac­cept­able be­hav­iour has been show­ing up every­where in T&T. Be­hind-the-counter con­ver­sa­tions, in par­tic­u­lar, have be­come com­mon­place. Cus­tomers do not vis­it busi­ness­es to lis­ten to work­place gos­sip or per­son­al sto­ries. They want pro­fes­sion­al­ism and ex­pect a smile, a warm greet­ing and a pos­i­tive send-off. The space be­hind the counter is not per­son­al ter­ri­to­ry. It’s a part of the phys­i­cal lay­out that should com­mand pro­fes­sion­al be­hav­iour and deco­rum.

Re­cent­ly, I had an un­for­tu­nate ex­pe­ri­ence at a phar­ma­cy. I asked the phar­ma­cist about the side ef­fects of med­ica­tion that I had pur­chased. Her re­sponse was, “You’ll get bet­ter when you take it, that’s the side ef­fect.”

Typ­i­cal­ly, the next 20 min­utes would have been ded­i­cat­ed to telling her that I didn’t need her to school me on the ben­e­fits of med­ica­tion. An ad­di­tion­al 20 min­utes would have been ded­i­cat­ed to school­ing her on front­line eti­quette and ser­vice ex­cel­lence. That evening, I was in a hur­ry, so I let it rest. I made a men­tal note to not pa­tro­n­ise that phar­ma­cy ever again. Notwith­stand­ing the fact that it is in a con­ve­nient lo­ca­tion.

Now, I’m sure that man­age­ment is com­plete­ly un­aware of my de­ci­sion. Had I kicked up a fuss, which I am very ca­pa­ble of do­ing, there would have been dam­age con­trol and amends be­ing made to neu­tralise the poor ex­pe­ri­ence.

This brings me to the ques­tion of how many cus­tomers like me make de­ci­sions to strike busi­ness­es off their pa­tron­age list, qui­et­ly and with­out fan­fare. It’s a busi­ness blind spot. I sus­pect that when busi­ness lead­ers start to mea­sure cus­tomer de­fec­tion, they would faint at the stag­ger­ing cus­tomer counts and as­so­ci­at­ed rev­enue val­ue.

Front­line be­hav­iour im­pacts busi­ness­es di­rect­ly. Em­ploy­ees need to choose pol­ished over slop­py be­hav­iours when in­ter­act­ing with cus­tomers. Dis­mis­sive­ness, in­dif­fer­ence, im­pa­tience and oth­er un­friend­ly be­hav­iours dri­ve cus­tomers away. At­ten­tive­ness, pos­i­tive word choic­es and em­pa­thy build cus­tomer loy­al­ty. These are not ex­tra­or­di­nary ex­pec­ta­tions. They are the ba­sics cus­tomers ex­pect every day.

Dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son, how­ev­er, the stakes be­come much high­er. The sea­son is a stress test of how well em­ploy­ees have been pre­pared for the shop­ping on­slaught. When cus­tomer vol­ume dou­bles, pres­sure ris­es, lines get longer and pa­tience gets short­er. Front­line eti­quette shapes the cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence be­ing de­liv­ered by the busi­ness. How well front­line em­ploy­ees greet, re­spond, en­gage and re­cov­er will de­ter­mine how well they rep­re­sent the busi­ness.

Many busi­ness­es be­lieve the biggest threat to rev­enue is posed by their com­peti­tors on the out­side. What if the biggest threats re­side on the in­side? It’s an un­com­fort­able but nec­es­sary ques­tion lead­ers need to con­sid­er. A great deal of time, ef­fort and mon­ey go in­to phys­i­cal and lo­gis­ti­cal prepa­ra­tions for the sea­son. The even­tu­al sales num­bers may look im­pres­sive, but the mon­ey lost to poor ser­vice is hard­ly ever cal­cu­lat­ed. The cost of un­der­pre­pared em­ploy­ees can can­cel out gains from the most care­ful­ly de­signed cam­paigns.

A sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of prof­itabil­i­ty de­pends on what hap­pens at the front­line. This is where cus­tomer loy­al­ty is won or lost. Em­ploy­ees in this part of the cus­tomer jour­ney car­ry the weight of the brand. It’s here, at these mo­ments of truth touch­points, that rev­enue is ei­ther wast­ed or pre­served.

Plac­ing trust in hope and al­low­ing un­pre­pared em­ploy­ees to de­cide the rev­enue out­comes of the busi­ness is a game of chance. So, the ques­tion be­comes, “What’s your front­line strat­e­gy for the Christ­mas sea­son?”