Front-line staff are crucial for delivering excellent customer service through "moments of truth", which are instances when customers assess service quality. However, these moments are often intangible and impossible to directly measure or anticipate. Instead of micro-managing front-line staff with irrelevant metrics, organizations should empower and intrinsically motivate staff to achieve high service standards. A true example is Anglian Water, whose employee reimbursed a customer for a hotel stay, gaining praise from management for exemplifying great customer service instead of reprimand. Empowering front-line employees in this way leads to higher customer satisfaction ratings compared to an excessive focus on metrics that do not reflect the customer experience.

1. V S Mahesh: Managing the service moments of truth
Front-line staff are crucial for service quality. Empower them, don't micro-manage
V S Mahesh / January 7, 2012, 0:00 IST
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Some of the golden rules thathave remained unchallenged in factory managementdo not hold
good for managementofservices.One such is: if you cannotmeasure it, you cannotmanage it.
Research findings clearlyindicate that customers rate a service organisation as excellent – the sort they will return to
and also provide very positive referrals for – when it exceeds their expectations on intangible aspects such as
“speedyresolution ofcustomer problems”,“delivering on their promises rightthe firsttime”,responsiveness,
accessibility,flexibility, courtesy, front-line competence and communication.
Organisations such as HDFC,Taj Hotels,Indigo and Landmark are rated highly not because their top management
personallyserve every customer.It is their front-line staff who deliver the customer experience through every
“momentoftruth” (MoT) — defined by Jan Carlsson,former CEOof Scandinavia Airlines System,as “every instance
when an organisation provides an opportunityfor a customer to make an assessmentofthe quality of the
organisation”.
Lestit be thoughtthat such MoTs are only a few, let me share the results ofa research projectI supervised on the
experience of lady customers entering fashion garmentoutlets in India.In less than a minute,such customers decide
“whether or not the shop is likely to have the sort of merchandise theywould like to purchase”.There were about150
MoTs that impacted them in that minute — a few tangible aspects,such as visual display,layout, aisle space,
hygiene, smell,sounds and colours,and manyintangibles like frowns,smiles,greetings,willingness a nd competence
to help. Observing all of these MoTs, let alone measuring them,is an impossible task.Nor can one anticipate the
MoTs that make all the difference.
What, then, is the solution to measuring qualityof service? As Deming had suggested,quality is bestassured through
those who produce rather than by third-party inspections.In the service context, front-line staff who deliver service
are in the bestposition to assure service quality. When they are trained and motivated (intrinsically) to achie ve the
right quality, and provided with clearly enunciated customer-defined standards to aim for,they will seek to achieve the
right results bythemselves.Many of these standards are for intangible aspects ofservice such as courtesy,
friendliness and approachability,which do not easilylend themselves to hard measures.The only way to score highly
on these standards is for front-line staff to be intrinsicallymotivated to do so.
Front-line staff oughtto feel like “forwards” in a successful football team,who
know for certain that the ball would be passed to them by the midfield without
having to ask for it. Cristiano Ronaldo and Leo Messi are notexpected to beg and
plead with the backs to pass the ball to them.Likewise,in an effective service
organisation,customer contactstaff should receive internal service at quality
levels commensurate with whatis expected of them by external customers.In Ken
Blanchard’s words,the organisational pyramid oughtto be philosophicallyturned
upside down,with customers on top and front-line staff immediatelybelow,with
the responsibilityto make them repeatcustomers.The restof the organisation should be viewed as forming the
lower,tapering-down partof the triangle,with their responsiveness to front-line staff as their key responsibility.

2. A true-life example of how this works in practice is what happened atthe UK’s Anglian Water (AW). A customer rang
AW customer care on a wintry Friday evening, with temperatures close to zero degrees.The customer said there was
no gas supplyto heattheir house.He suspected thatthe AW workman who had been sighted repairing the water
pipes outside had inadvertentlydamaged the gas pipe.With two young children athome and the wife away, he was
at the end of his tether. The 22-year-old AW employee who received this call thoughton her feet and told him:“As it
is late Friday, it mightbe difficult to get British Gas to repair the gas pipes till tomorrow.So,could you please check
into a local hotel for the night with your family and tell me what number Ican reach you tomorrow before noon?
Meanwhile,I will try to get the problem fixed and let you know when you can get back home.We will be happy to
reimburse you the cost of the hotel rooms up to £50.”
Far from reprimanding the employee,the Customer Service Director of AW went around the companytelling
everyone to try and emulate that young lady. Not surprisingly,AW was rated #1 in customer service among all UK
utility companies for several years in succession.An essential pointto learn from this is that the AW management
could not have anticipated an MoT like this, let alone go aboutmicro-managing it.
Unfortunately, many organisations thatare locked into the manufacturing paradigm have fallen into the trap of
measuring whatthey can. Call centres,for example,measure the number ofcalls per agentper hour, time per call
and the number of rings before taking a call. Some even measure the time taken for every toilet break an employee
takes.No customer would suggest these irrelevantmeasures,as some ofthese measures work againsttheir
interests.For example,with a view to improve their productivity, call-centre agents hurry customers to the extent that
they mightnot even listen to their complaints properly.
One is reminded ofthe driver searching for his car key under a streetlight. When asked how sure he was that he had
dropped the key there, he answered thathe had actually dropped it somewhere in the dark alley beyond. As there
was no light there, he chose to search for the key where there was adequate light,he explained.
Rather than spending time micro-managing irrelevanttasks,itis bestto try and emulate the likes of AW, who spent
years trying various ways of putting a genuine smile on the faces of empowered employees,and letting them run with
the ball.
The writer, a former corporate executive, was the founder-director of the Centre for Service Managementat the
University of Buckingham,and is now MD of Chennai-based VSMConsulting Services.