Letting Agents and McDonalds.
I used to work at MaccyDee’s (aka McDonalds). If you aren’t 100% satisfied with your burger, they’ll make another for you. That’s their assurance to you if the order taker at the ‘can I take yer order stand’, or the one with the all the Stars (yes, I had all the stars before you ask) makes the burger, isn’t always on top of his or her game… it will be sorted with a smile.
People make mistakes, estate and letting agents make mistakes. If to err is human, but to forgive is divine, surely this is a sign to empower our front line negs and property managers to make more honest mistakes. Humans aren’t perfect, and it is precisely this imperfection that endears us to one another. Surely our vendors, tenants, landlords and buyers would be the first to recognise this. Unquestionably empathy works both ways… doesn’t it? (unless you are tenant who rings you up at 5.25pm on Friday who says, ‘I haven’t had any heating for the last three days, and I am having my family round tomorrow morning, can you sort it?’ .. to which you think, a plumber on a late Friday afternoon? More chance of winning the lottery ..and why the hell didn’t you ring three bl**dy days ago ?
I read somewhere recently that some figures that show that companies who are not able to satisfactorily solve a issue, but went about it in a authentic, kind-hearted way and genuine way, had million times better review scores than companies who did solve a particular issue, but did so in a uncouth, uncaring or coarse way. So what I am really saying is this, it’s not whether you solve the issue (in the end it is),but on the face of it, the way you deal with it …. classic aptitude versus attitude?
In a world where we punish our negs and property managers if they spend too much time on the phone, what if we rewarded them based on how many times they dropped a clanger? What if we incentivised our negs and property managers based on their ability to volunteer times they were prepared to take a chance to tackle a challenge, versus palming it off to the boss? What if they were to fail, instead of b*******king them, praise and encourage them to share their thoughts and insights, what they learnt and what they would have different … thus everyone could learn in the business which gives the potential for the whole firm to evolve and mature?
PS …. and before you say, I see the irony that if someone sets out to a drop a clanger, to make a mistake, to co*k up on purpose, it isn’t a mistake at all, is it?
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