New study helps retailers improve customer service

Some people are naturals at customer service. You can see it in the relaxed faces of the customers they serve. But other people struggle, and you can see this in the customers who don’t return.

Retail supervisors want to help their employees, especially those who struggle. A new finding in a study by Gerald Seijts, a researcher at the University of Western Ontario, may help them.

Seitjts’ research focused on how managers use goal-setting to motivate their employees and which type of goals are most effective.

For many years, management experts have recommended goal-setting to motivate employees and help them focus their efforts. Research repeatedly shows that goal-setting achieves results.

Past studies have shown that for goal-setting to be effective, goals must be specific and challenging, outcomes must be measured and deadlines must give people a boundary.

Two types of goals
Seijts’ research tested two variations of goal-setting. A comparison of two goals given by a supervisor to a sales clerk in a department store will illustrate these variations.

Instruction to Clerk A: “We wish to improve customer relations, and we measure how well we do with a telephone survey. Your goal is for all of your customers to rate the quality of your service as ‘very good’ or above in the next round of follow up calls. You have four weeks.”

Instruction to Clerk B: “We wish to improve customer relations, and we measure how well we do with a telephone survey. Your goal is to discover and implement six different ways to get your customers to smile during your time with them. You have four weeks.”

Seijts labels the first goal a performance goal. It assumes that a person already knows how to perform the task efficiently and merely needs to be motivated to accomplish it.

The second he labels a learning goal. It assumes that a person does not possess sufficient knowledge and/or skill to accomplish the desired outcome.

Instead, this person needs to focus on the process of reaching the goal. He or she needs to learn how to accomplish the task in an efficient manner.

Seijts tested these two types of goals to see which was more effective. The task his subjects completed was difficult, and to perform well they needed to search for information. They also needed to be persistent.

Results
Seijts collected outcome results for both groups. Which group do you suppose had the highest, bottom-line results?

If you reasoned that a specific, difficult goal would stimulate the best performance, then you might choose the group receiving the performance goal.

But in Seijts’ study, those pursuing a learning goal far outpaced the group with the performance goal. They were eight times more likely to achieve the desired outcome. That’s a big difference.

Why the difference
Professor Seijts explains the process this way:

When people lack the skills and/or knowledge needed to efficiently complete a task, the purpose of a goal should be to focus on the process of acquiring this knowledge and then implementing it. Small steps in this process build confidence because employees experience success in taking these steps.

These small, frequent experiences of success also build commitment toward reaching the final learning goal. In Seijts’ study, subjects pursuing a learning goal stuck with the task significantly longer.

It was quite a different experience for Seijts’ subjects who pursued a performance goal.

As they progressed through the difficult task, their attention was focused on the final outcome.

Since it was very difficult, they did not notice small steps they were making that brought the final outcome nearer. Instead, they became discouraged.

They experienced their efforts as failures, and they tended to reduce their effort. They decreased their time in completing the task. Their confidence dropped off, and their commitment toward the goal diminished. By the end of the test, they lagged far behind.

Professor Seijts’ findings present a challenge for retail supervisors: to correctly assess the learning needs of their people and the performance situations they face, and then to match challenging learning goals with employees who need to learn how to complete these difficult tasks.

With the little push that goal setting provides, learning goals will help people actually implement this learning.

This article was written by James Larsen, Ph.D., of Management Resources, Inc., in Lincoln, Nebraska.