By Allwell Nwankwo

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.”  You know who said so.  Peter Drucker.  But if you think he didn’t know what he was talking about, you only need to experience the helplessness of some frontline employees before customers.

Frontline employees are, sometimes, unable to deliver excellent service because their managers claim to know how best to serve customers.  And to prove their knowledge, they come up with brilliant rules that emasculate their frontline people.  Let’s consider an example.

A prospect wanted to open a savings account in a Nigerian bank (let’s withhold the name of the bank for now).  After completing the account opening forms, she was told her company identity card was not adequate to identify her and that she should produce a PHCN bill to authenticate her address.  She was also told that only a national ID card, an international passport or a driver’s licence was an acceptable means of identification.  All for a mere savings account!  In annoyance, the prospect left.

Less than a kilometre away, she stepped into the branch of another bank.  The difference was clear, as they say. The customer service executive on duty not only completed the account opening form for the customer, but also accepted the corporate ID card as a means of identification.  In addition, she didn’t ask for any utility bill – after all, even children (who pay no utility bills) can open savings accounts.  The only seeming downside was that the opening balance was twice that of the other bank.  But the customer was happy to make the extra deposit.

This story illustrates what happens when managers of a business decide to operate by thick unfriendly rule books that make no room for the discretion of the intelligent beings on the frontline.  In an article titled “Zombies in Civilian Dress” which was published in The Guardian of 24 September, 2009, Kola Akomolede, narrated his ordeal in the hands of frontline employees of an embassy and an internet service provider – both of whom insisted that, to be served, the customer must produce documents that were either unavailable or obviously irrelevant.
How could anyone produce a PHCN bill if he was on the pre-paid platform? Akomolede blamed managers for the actions of their subordinates.  And I think he is right.

Managers have a responsibility to ensure that policies that relate to serving customers are applied with discretion.  Such policies must be relevant and necessary. For instance, it doesn’t make sense to insist that a self-employed person bring a letter from his employers in order to obtain a visa, or that a customer get the approval of his account officer before moving funds between his two accounts within the bank.  After all, he is not asking for a loan.
Have you noticed that if you have to do a simple replacement of your SIM card at any of the service centres run by the telecom companies, you need to provide an acceptable form of identification, no matter how long you have been a customer? Although the networks have our biometric data and pictures, they still treat everyone like a stranger. Recently, I challenged a telecom customer service rep to use the data on her system. Her tame response: “We haven’t started using the data yet to process customer issues.” You wonder, when will they ever start?

If you manage a business or a section of it, I suggest you urgently review your policies to make sure they still serve the needs of customers. Some rules that were useful in the past may no longer be relevant today. Why apply anachronistic rules to your service?