Is teamwork throughout the entire organization necessary for giving good service? Does the route man hear of many minor complaints which are a result of unsatisfactory service from various departments? When the route man hears of such complaints should he report them to the office on his return? Why? When a minor complaint has been reported, should anything be done by the manager or his representative to make the patron feel something has been done to prevent a recurrence? What should be done if the complaint arose from the patron's unfamiliarity with the laundering quality of her garments? From unfamiliarity with laundering processes? With laundry organization? Is the route man handicapped in trying to give good service by a patron's complaints about the telephone girl, the adjustment department, or the bookkeeper's office? Is it to his interest to have these departments give more satisfactory service? Can the route man be expected to sell more laundry service without some help from others in the plant? What kind of help does the route man need? How can it be given? Can the route man be expected to bring in much new business without having a plan to follow? What should that plan include? Who will make it? What provisions for help of various kinds should the plan include? Should the manager adapt his service to the convenience of the customer, or expect the customer to adapt herself to the plant's organization? In what way is the executive staff of a laundry like a coaching team for the employees? How is the manager and the foremen to get every man to do his job as the manager thinks it should be done? Which is better, a good team or a collection of star performers? Topic No. 12. Training Help as an Aid to Increasing Sales The quality of service depends upon what employees know and do. Increasing sales in the laundry business admittedly depends upon two essential factors: First, upon delivering an entirely satisfactory quality of service, and second, upon making the right kind of effort to get more business. Obviously, in order to get more business a laundry needs to have a working force able and willing to do everything required for increasing sales. The quality of laundry service is but the sum total of the quality of the work done by all the workers, which, on the whole, depends upon what each knows and is willing to do. The quality of service delivered by a laundry is the joint product of the employees in the processing departments, and of those in the customer service departments, such as the call office, the credit, the adjustment, and the collecting and delivery departments. If a laundry is to increase its business, both the employees who process and those who meet customers need to be able to do well all those things necessary for satisfying customers. The technical staff of the laundry, aided by scientific research, and the resources of a national association, develops the standards and the routine to be followed in the processing departments, and so in a sense is responsible for the quality of the service of the plant operatives. The customer service departments, however, as a whole, usually have no one responsible for the quality of their work, and have no scientifically exact standards to guide them. The workers in the service departments are called upon daily and constantly to please people under ever-varying conditions, so no routine of conduct or of answer is possible. Every customer contact calls for the exercise of judgment rather than for compliance with a set of formulae or standardized motions. Obviously, the service departments have a difficult job, as the degree of satisfaction they give customers depends upon what each individual employee knows about handling people in a pleasing way. Employees have much to learn.-All who employ others have the problem of reaching an understanding with their employees as to how their work is to be done. The manager himself may delegate this problem to his subordinates, but the job of breaking in a new employee and of holding him to the standard of performance desired is still a managerial problem no matter who actually performs it. A route man, telephone operator, counter girl, or adjuster is expected to use the methods of dealing with people which the superior thinks should be used. Indeed, most superiors expect their helpers to do just as the superior himself would do under the same circumstances. Whether or not this is always possible, because of the difference in experience of the worker and the superior, does not seem to have occurred to many managerial assistants. Further, as any large plant has certain policies for the guidance of its employees, every employee is expected to follow these policies in all cases not covered by specific instructions. In addition, from the very first, new employees are expected to conform to the hours, practices, and standards establish for that department. All told, an employee has much to learn before he can be expected to do really satisfactory work. Every laundry trains its own employees.-Every employer finds it necessary to give his helpers some instructions about how to do their work. Indeed, he usually finds it is necessary to provide foremen or supervisors who spend most of their time telling their subordinates how to do certain things, and then in seeing that their subordinates do these things in the way in which they have been told to do them. While most managers think of this as supervision, yet it is but a kind of training; for anything done to get a person to change his way of doing things is a form of training. As a matter of fact, every laundry begins to train an employee from the moment it is decided to hire him. One of the first thoughts size up an applicant has of an employing official when he starts to to do with how well the applicant and his foreman will get along together. In other words, the employing official is wondering whether the applicant will do things in the way and spirit in which his superior wants them done, and then whether the man will continue to do as he is told. In other words, the employing official sizes up in terms of a training job, every person who is being considered as a possible employee. How much of our way of doing things does this person know? How much must we teach him? How will he respond to our instruction? These are but first stage training thoughts. Once the individual is employed his training continues. Every time a man is told how to do a thing, and every time he is told why certain things should be done in certain ways, the man is being trained. Every time the man is called down by his superiors, he is being trained; for calling down is but a negative way of training an employee. When the foreman says, either directly or indirectly, "Don't you know you should not do that?" or "Haven't you been told not to do that?" he is telling the employee how not to do something, which is but a negative way of telling him how to do it. If the average employee has been effectively instructed, or told what to do and reminded of it at the right time in the right way, there will be but little occasion to call him down. Telling and reminding are but other words for training. As a worker's superiors watch him at work. or as they learn how well satisfied customers are with the worker, they are unconsciously deciding whether or not the worker needs to be told anything further to help him do a better job-that is, whether or not he needs more training. In time, if he stays, the average worker comes to do practically everything to the satisfaction of his superior, and then his training for that kind of work is practically over. What service employees need to know.-What an employee has to be taught, or trained to do, depends upon his job. Those in the processing departments need to know the technique of their part of the processing work, while those in the service departments need to know the particular duties of their jobs, and, in addition, how to deal effectively with people. Practically all the jobs in the service department of a laundry involve meeting and dealing, as the representative to some degree of the laundry, with patrons and others. To do this effectively the worker needs to know— 1. The services offered patrons by the plant and his own department; Abilities needed for satisfactory contacts with patrons.-Dealing effectively with people requires a number of separate abilities, according to Dr. Franklin Bobbitt, which in modified form are enumer ated here for the light they throw upon the training problem in the service departments 1. The ability and disposition to talk and act in those sympathetic, tact- 3. The ability and disposition to meet and converse easily and naturally 4. The ability and disposition to act in those sincere, honest, straightforward, truthful, fair dealing, and dependable ways upon which all satisfactory business relations must be based; 5. The ability to discern the motives which actuate human beings when in business situations and relationships; 6. The ability to discern the unspoken expectations of others; 7. The ability to sense and evaluate the reactions of others; 8. The ability to gain the confidence of those with whom one comes in contact in business; and 9. The ability and disposition to maintain a proper and suitable personal appearance. Steps in developing an ability.-As success in dealing with people requires these abilities and dispositions, all those in the service departments who come in contact with patrons and business callers. need to have these abilities and dispositions developed to the point where the worker can give the maximum of satisfaction. Just how this can be done can not be discussed in detail more than is necessary to point out that a training program for workers who deal with people should be organized and managed so that each worker 1. Develops an active desire for each of these abilities and dispositions; Systematic training necessary.-When a manager realizes just what his service employees need to know, he sees that some kind of systematic training is necessary. A study of the service employees will usually show that few have had a home or social life which has enabled them to develop the abilities, attitudes, and dispositions which enable them to make successful contact with people. The conditions in which most of these socially handicapped employees live and work are not such as to enable them to realize their shortcomings or to learn more pleasing ways of dealing with people. Accidental, hit or miss, and uninterpreted experiences will not make a socially pleasing person from the average telephone operator, countergirl, or route man. Organized systematic training alone can be expected to improve the quality of service given by these employees. Group conference the most effective kind of training.-Organized training does not necessarily mean going to school or listening to lectures. There are more valuable ways of training experienced workers than having them listen to some one talk or read a few books. For one thing, a group discussion in which a selected group of workers takes an active part, each contributing from his own experience and profiting from the experience of others in handling a certain situation is far more valuable than any formal schooling or course of lectures. When an office worker can tell the members of a conference group of office workers just how he satisfied a patron by what he said, he has not only the satisfaction of tellings others of his good work but also an increased desire to do similar things under the same circumstances. When a route man can tell a conference of route men what he says and why, when selling a certain kind of service to a patron, he comes to realize just what was the really good thing he said or did and thus becomes more able to do it again. His thinking while telling others enables him to understand better what he really did and may suggest to all present better ways of doing the same thing next time. Those who participate in such conferences become more proficient; as they become more proficient they become more interested; as they become more interested they are stimulated to think and to study how to do those things even better. What the most socially effective worker can discuss with others helps them, stimulates them, and interests them just as they are helped, stimulated, and interested by telling their own experiences. Group conferences widen social experience.-Group conferences can be used not only to promote a general interest among employees in finding out how to do their work better, but also to enlarge the social experiences of those participating. Much that is done apparently rudely by some office workers is but a reflection of their limited social experience and narrow, selfish point of view. A discussion of the social standards of certain groups of customers will often open the eyes of workers who had never thought of how narrow their own social experience had been. A difference with a customer can be made the basis of a discussion on how to handle that kind of customer and that kind of situation in the way most pleasing to the customer and most effective to the plant. A discussion of what certain people expect of other people, especially of laundry-office employees, will often be a revelation to many who had merely thought some customers were queer, cranky, fastidious, or affected. In so far as these discussions can be based upon the experience of those participating and 50111-27-10 |