While my expertise is in customer service and CX, I was asked two questions in a recent interview and immediately thought the answers would be worth sharing in this column. The first question was about the traits needed for someone to be good in a customer-facing role, such as sales or customer support. That’s a great question, and I’ll answer that in a future article. However, the follow-up question is what I’m addressing today. I was asked, “What traits are good for customer service leaders?”
I responded, “Any of the traits I mentioned for customer-facing employees is a good place to start for leadership.” I was pressed for a more specific answer and came up with three traits that all customer-focused leaders must practice. The truth is these traits are basic leadership traits that any good leader possesses. Here are the three that immediately came to mind:
Great Leaders Have Integrity: Let’s start with perhaps the most important trait: integrity, or trust. After all, you wouldn’t want to do business with a company you didn’t trust. Would you want to work for a leader you didn’t trust or whose integrity was in question? All you have to do is look at Newsweek’s list of the world’s most trustworthy companies and you’ll recognize many of the brands, such as Whirlpool, Coca-Cola, Kroger, Amazon, Costco and many more. One thing all of these companies do is make the customer a priority with the products they sell and the customer experience they provide.
Great Leaders Have Vision: A leader without vision will lead employees to nowhere. This is especially important in customer service and CX. One of my favorite examples is the late Tony Hsieh, the former CEO of Zappos, who stayed true to his belief that customer service would drive his company’s success. From the moment employees were hired and onboarded, they were exposed to Hsieh’s relentless focus on taking care of people—both customers and employees. The result was an incredibly engaged team that garnered some of the highest customer satisfaction ratings in the retail world. Perhaps that’s why Jeff Bezos of Amazon, also known for a vision focused on the customer, bought Zappos in 2009 for $1.2 billion and kept Hsieh as the company’s CEO to ensure that his vision for customer service lived on.
Great Leaders Are Willing to Listen: This is not about listening skills, but the willingness to listen. Feedback and suggestions from both customers and employees are worth listening to. Some leaders make it easy for people to contact them. Others have a system that allows for the appropriate feedback and suggestions to find their way to the C-suite. One of my favorite examples of a leader who listens is the former CEO of Frito-Lay. Roger Enrico challenged employees to “act like an owner.” One of the employees, Richard Montañez, who was a janitor at Frito-Lay, took this idea to heart and approached Enrico with the idea of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Enrico listened, and the product became one of Frito-Lay’s top-selling items. Montañez eventually became an executive at the company. Today he shares his message as a motivational speaker and author.
Entire books have been written about the traits of great leaders. After the interview, I could have mentioned at least a dozen or more. These were the first three that came to mind. I hope you’ll comment and share your list of top leadership traits.