OK, so I woke up thinking, “No that wasn’t quite accurate.” While I still contend the bigger you get the less friendly matters due to the speed of business. Where I think I missed the mark was what if you are not a huge chain. And I also missed the opportunity to celebrate when both are working well. Therefore I apologize; I did not live up to my usual practice of setting a balanced reality check and acknowledging what good looks like.
First off, if you are one or five or fifteen locations, how does one identify how both aspects of the business matter? Again friendly is subjective and efficiency is formulaic. The systems, processes and procedures will become very obvious, very quickly. Either they are there or they are not and they are being done or they are not. This is easier to manage than a behavioral choice to be friendly or not.
Yesterday, I said size matters. Let me rephrase into more of true business construct; scale matters. For example, if I own a one or two store operation, I am undoubtedly involved in the day-to-day operations. More than not, I am working in the business and on the business. My core values are being shared at the epicenter of activity. I am saying “hi” to both customer and team member, and in turn I am modeling “what good looks like”. The further I get away from this epicenter, the less my core values are being experienced and interpreted in real time. By the way the systems are running congruent to this “friendly thing”. I am not worrying as much about efficiency, because there are systems are in place. But if a customer says Todd gave a bad impression and wasn’t very friendly, I freak out because I cannot press some reset button – I have to face him and his behavioral choices based on his relative filter of what friendly should look like. Have you gone cross-eyed yet? That is how I woke up. Yes, due to my job and because I love it so, I sleep and dream in learning and development situations. With efficiency there is a sense of calm, but friendly has to deal with people. And people are different. More on this later.
Now the second part, while scale may matter, some stores of scale have got this balance down. Perfect example, Lowes. This big-box, do-it-yourself chain is very good at both. They engage in a great two-step process. When you walk in, the one closest says “hi”. Then as you are walking deeper into the store, another team member (who has already surmised you have been greeted) says “are you finding everything you need?” Perfect timing, the store is huge and I have no idea where I should go find that stainless hook my wife asked me to get for the bathroom. This involves both a friendly exchange laced with something that would impact my efficiency in getting what I need. Nice meets speed. Other good examples based on my experience are Ace Hardware, Target (kinda; the deli gal knows me as the Band-Aid guy, long story), The Sports Authority and Brooks Brothers. There are too many to mention that do not have it balanced. They do have the efficiency down, so to each their own.
So what is different today than yesterday? Perhaps the best and only place today to focus is on people. Anyone can be trained to execute a process, but ask them to be friendly, they just stare at you. Inside their head, they are asking themselves, “huh?” As mentioned yesterday, you must be able to identify specific behaviors to meet your desired end result. If friendly is your goal, tell your team what friendly looks and sounds like. As simple or even as condescending as it may seem, if you don’t define friendly for your team, they will define it for you. I do so love it when my team practices on my customers. That is sarcasm, by the way. People form their behaviors very early on based on the learning environments they experience (family, school, trial-error, etc.). As an owner or manager, you must be aware that those learned behaviors may be in conflict with what you expect.
Despite my blanket statement that scale affects the “friendly factor”, I would be unfair if I did not express some organizations have made a concerted effort to establish a noticeable balance between being friendly and being efficient. It does exist. Perhaps the best way to sum it up is to ask; “can you tell when the balance exits and is this why you do business with them?” And if so, is it also conversely why you do not do business with another? Just another thought.