Customer Relations Non-top Down Management is Best

I worked for a company called KASET International in Tampa Florida for the first 6 years of my professional career. I was very lucky to do so because Ken and Shannon Johnston's ideals for how to run a company and my part in it have helped me get and keep jobs.

My first week on the job Mr. Johnston made each new employee recite and repeat what the company does, KASET is a Customer Relations Improvement Company, I never forgot this. They were sold and re-sold long after they were heralded as the best customer relations training company with numerous awards. Mr. Johnston wrote a book I still have today called, Busting Bureaucracy. Associated Content. URL:( http://www.busting-bureaucracy.com/), which he is giving away now. I think the book should be made into some mandatory business school training, but only if you think it will help, do not want to mandate anything, Ken made me apologize for that once!

One point Mr. Johnston makes that has remained with me since is that normal Management practices are to conduct business with a top down approach. That is to make the staff conform to a set of mandated rules management devises to control the staff. As Mr. Johnston puts it, "do policies, practices, and procedures tend to grow endlessly? Are employees required to follow them more and more rigidly?" This diagram, posted here, of a normal company organization chart compared to a customer friendly chart visually shows the point. The top down approach is missing one very important symbol, the customer. The customer is shown to really be on top right next to the staff that comes in direct contact with the customer who is also above management in importance.

Anyone who is dealing with the customer directly is supposed to be 'at the top' so to speak. The most important employee in say a Sales organization is the Salesman for example. As it was when I worked at KASET if the Salesman wanted me to help with their computer and my Manager was waiting for something I was able to put my Manager's request behind the Salesman's without repercussion of reprimand. Also, in the organization I work in now, Healthcare, anyone working with the Patient I must drop everything for and support with a number one priority.

Management needs to get barriers, within reason, out of the way of staff that support these 'frontline' staff, also referred to as internal customers, so that they can better serve their external customers. Barriers like slow computers, not enough supplies, endless procedures, forms and inefficient software all contribute to treatment of a customer that is 'discounted' in KASET terminology.

As I stated before these ideals have helped me get and keep jobs. During interviews I often describe my experiences working for KASET. All the classes I took, what I was taught there and the fact that I was successful working with customer Relations Training professionals under their scrutiny. I also mention, with some reluctance, how I will conduct myself, if hired, always supporting my internal customers with priority over Management. This has never backfired and in fact I have drawn the organizational charts you see posted here in many interviews and it starts a great conversation about just what Ken and Shannon evangelized, as to what true customer relations practices should be.

Florida Fred