Brands always will tout how important their Customers are to them.  Sometimes it’s trite hyperbole, and sometimes it’s a sick joke.  There are definitely different levels of no-kidding on-the-ground real-world ardor for Customers from one brand or another, but there never seems to be a lack of brands telling the world how much they love their Customers.

Talk, after all, is cheap.

But also, the same goes for their employees.

Just as with their Customers, most brands will constantly say their employees are #1 to them.  They’ll go on and on about how much they appreciate and care about their team members, and how they’re the most valuable asset.  (Somehow that “asset talk” kind of rings oddly, considering the message it’s intended to get across, but anyway.)

Still, though, often these very brands show a remarkable lack of respect and concern for their front-line employees—not by paying them poorly or offering too few benefits or perks; not because they don’t get ping-pong tables in the break rooms or beer on tap in the cafeteria.  Maybe they make their team members pay for parking at the office or force them (imagine!) to come into the office every day.

Worse than all this, though, is when they leave their Customer-facing employees to defend their preposterous non-Customer-friendly policies and procedures.

Stupid policies and inconvenient processes and systems are often (and rightly) viewed as impediments to good Customer Experience.  From the perspective of the Customer, they diminish your brand and make it more likely you’ll endeavor to find greener pastures.  But it’s rare that a brand will consider the negative impact on the team itself.

It takes a hardy sort to work in, say, Customer Service or Support.  By and large I respect the resilience required in that field.  As I’d mentioned recently, some Customers are unreasonable and inconsolable.  Some are downright rude and mean.  Facing them (even if over the phone) calls for a special skillset and thick skin.  But imagine if your job entailed having to deal with irate Customers and an employer that doesn’t properly support you either.

Now, there are the obvious ways you need to support your front-line (and all, really) employees:  Enable them with the proper tools needed to do their job; Empower them with the authority to fix Customers’ issues; and Encourage them to take on a Customer-centric mindset.  I’ve written about that before, and it even merits a whole section of my book.

But you know another even more striking way you can support your team members?  Actually showing them that you care about and value them?  Demonstrate how important they are to you?

Fix your stupid processes instead.

I’ll often marvel, when I’m talking with someone in Customer Support, how incredibly straightforward not only the solution to an issue I’m having is, but also how simple (maybe not easy,  but simple) removing the issue altogether would be, universally erasing the problem and obviating all Customers from ever having to call in for this particular reason.  Instead, front-line agents and team members spend all day doing trivial fixes (and apologizing for the issue) to known concerns for countless Customers.

It’s remarkable, also, how frequently when, while I’m receiving help from a Customer Support agent or similar associate, I’ll mention, “You know, this happens every time…they should just fix the problem at the root.”  What’s even more remarkable, though, is how frequently the response from the agent will be “Yeah, I know.  I take calls on this very thing all day long, every day.”

What?

I recently accidentally (although I’ll take full responsibility for it…create a fool-proof system and I’ll come along and re-define “fool”) cancelled my credit card when I’d only meant to dispute one particular charge.  I’d attempted to flag it in the app, but there didn’t seem (at least in retrospect after the fact) to be nearly enough are-you-sure-you-want-to-do-this? protections built into the system to warn me (and fools like me) of the hassle I was about to unleash upon myself.  Fortunately, this credit card issuer employs fantastic fraud department team members, and with a little bit of escalation I was taken care of (not completely saved from myself, but we pieced together a solution).

After all was done and settled down the next week, I called back to offer a bit of feedback:  ‘Your app doesn’t offer much in the way of fail-safe to avoid a Customer inadvertently cancelling his card.  There ought to be a pop-up or something that makes it more explicit.’

The supervisor who took my feedback was very welcoming and gracious.  But she also said, “Yes, we’ve had that feedback a lot.”

That should be a huge red-flag for the company.  Not the specific issue itself (although, yeah), but rather that they’re hearing it often enough that their agents know it themselves.

So, listen to your front-line agents.  Sift through the tags on your ticketing system.  Show respect for your employees by removing friction for your Customers.  I wasn’t yelling and screaming at the agent, but I’m sure there were those in tighter fixes whose emotions were taken out on the very team members this brand likely likes to say they love and respect.  Are they showing it?