Alexander Kjerulf

[Dox47]

I’m not usually the touchy-feely type, but I really like this guy’s blogs and management philosophy, I think it is really applicable to the restaurant delivery industry and is right on as far as motivating people goes. His blogs about rethinking customer service are excellent and thought provoking, as are his thoughts on how to deal with jerks at work. Here are a few suggested highlights from his site, but I really recommend just browsing through the whole thing when you’ve got some time to kill, it’s free and worth the time.

The main site; http://positivesharing.com/

Top 5 reasons why “The customer is Always Right†is wrong
Alexander Kjerulf:

…The phrase “The customer is always right†was originally coined by Harry Gordon Selfridge, the founder of Selfridge’s department store in London in 1909, and is typically used by businesses to:

1. Convince customers that they will get good service at this company
2. Convince employees to give customers good service

Fortunately more and more businesses are abandoning this maxim - ironically because it leads to bad customer service.

Here are the top five reasons why “The customer is always right†is wrong…

How to handle chronic complainers
Alexander Kjerulf:

…Got any chronic complainers where you work? It seems like every workplace has them - the people for whom the weather is always too warm or too cold, the boss is a jerk, the food is lousy, work sucks and … you fill out the list.

No matter how good things get they still only see the bad - and they go to huge lengths to point it out to everyone around them…

Jerks at work - and five ways to deal with them
Alexander Kjerulf:

…Let’s make one thing perfectly clear: The vast majority of people in any given business are nice. They’re helpful, sympathetic, likable and quite simply good people. Only a tiny, tiny minority are consistently unpleasant or abrasive.

You sometimes hear in business that “nice guys finish last†ie. that in a cutthroat, dog-eat-dog (hence the picture above) business climate you need to be something of a jerk to get results. Consequently people with difficult or abrasive personalities are tolerated (or even celebrated) in many organizations because “they may not be likeable but they get resultsâ€.

I beg to differ. Jerks have no place in the modern business world and cause much more damage than they’re worth. This is not a matter of namby-pamby, soft-shoe “why can’t we all be nice†thinking; it comes down to the fact that jerks are bad for the bottom line! Luckily, many people and companies are starting to realize this and are doing something about it.

This blogpost presents five different anti-jerk approaches that every workplace might consider…

Many people here seem to have problems hiring and retaining great employers, and/or motivating the ones they do have, exactly what this guy is talking about. This is all excellent advice on his site, and again is free, I have no agenda here in posting it, other than agreeing with the guy and wanting to see his practices become more widespread.

 

[yadama]

A phrase that I heard once and use often (it might have been on this board somewhere)
is “The customer may not always be right, but they are always the one paying”
I’ll check him out. I’ll take all the help I can get when it comes to dealing with “special” customers!
Thanks!