Employee Attitude - An Asset or a Liability
Human resources management is a very important pillar in the functioning and prosperity of an organization because it deals with the most dynamic and important resource of all i.e. People. It is the responsibility of the senior hierarchy in an organization to instill in the employee’s the beliefs and values of the organization, and also to make sure that everyone is bound by them. But unfortunately, despite extensive training and grooming of employees, one thing that backfires if not attended- the attitude of employees.
Due to globalization, markets have grown larger and the world has become smaller. Business between continents has increased manifold leading to exchange of ideas, concepts and processes. But improper implementation of techniques without considering the 'local factors' leads to adverse problems for organizations. For e.g. attitudes of employees towards their customers in Europe should be different to those in India, as the customers have different set of queries, problems, culture and backgrounds.
One major example of wrong employee attitude towards their customers leading to loss of brand loyalty is in the services industry. Mobile service providers like Vodafone, Airtel, Loop etc have the issue of their customer service executives not having the right attitude towards the problem-ridden customer. Employees are often busy in non-productive activities like chatting on phone, delaying attending unattended customers, having an extended lunch session etc which causes a sense of frustration amongst the already grief-stricken consumer. Above that, failure to find a solution to the existing problem by causing a delay, further adds to the agitation of the customer. Such a negative experience affects the customers and it leads to a spread of bad word of mouth of the entire organization. And all this only due to the wrong attitude of the customer facing employees.
Similarly, DTH service providers like Tata Sky, Dish TV, Airtel TV etc also have a problem of not being able to find answers to customer problems inspite of promising to do so.
On the contrary, Global brand McDonald's, make sure that all its customer-facing employees are well equipped to handle queries of customers and provide them excellent service, thereby leading to a positive buzz in the market.
Sometimes employees have an attitude problem which arises out of the competition within an organisation. This also weakens the team dynamics, thereby causing a problem in the functioning of a business.
Thus, attitudes of employees towards their customers should be a matter of serious concern for the senior management as, for the service industry, a customer touch point is their marketing. Despite the fact that an organization may provide the best product in the industry, there is one pivotal factor in the mind of a customer which may damage that company's image- 'wrong employee attitude'.
