Empowerment

Dealership owners and managers must learn to empower their employee’s to make decisions that are in the interests of good customer service, while stressing not to give away the farm. Managers need to monitor employees with regard to this function, and coach and counsel them.

Empowerment simply means giving your employees total responsibility for the job they were hired to do! Put another way, place responsibility and accountability where it belongs, vested in your employees. If your employees cannot make good decisions or judgment calls, they need more training or you may need to take a closer look to see if they are in fact qualified for the job.

Once you turn over the responsibility of fulfilling customer service within your policies and procedures framework, your employees will feel better about their jobs, and provide your customers with a higher degree or level of service. This has been proven at major corporations. Just because a dealership is a smaller sized business does not mean that this system will not work for you.

The best practices of empowerment are:

- Exacting responsibility to employees – make them responsible for their jobs.
- Provide the framework they are to work within – set policy and procedural goals.
- Consistently support and guide employees through your changes.
- Never, ever undermine the decisions an employee may make, unless it was disastrous to the business or the customer. Discuss different avenues the employee may have taken if decisions are not in line with policy, or if things could have been handled differently or easier.

Learn to support individuals no matter what the outcome. If at some point you disagree with a decision, investigate and discuss different ways to have handled it. Never challenge or chastise employees in front of other employees. Never humiliate or make disparaging comments or snide rude remarks to your employees or behind their backs to other employees. These types of managerial outbursts will negate all your efforts to achieve a team spirit of providing good customer service. Discourage and eliminate this damaging effect in all of your employees, and remember that following this rule is paramount to building an exceptional team atmosphere.

“Customer service is our way of life”

David