The customer as per Bob Ansett
Bob Ansett ran the most successful rent-a-car business in Australia for 25 years. During that time, he did some creative and yet unorthodox sales methods. Example: on one occasion they had run out of cars and a customer called asking for a rental. Rather than tell the customer that they had run out (which in Ansett’s standards was not good customer service), they rented out one from Avis and re-rented it to the customer. Anyone else would have kept quiet about that - not Ansett, who explained to the customer “Sir, I apologise if this car is not as clean as you’d like but it is actually one of our competitors. We have been so busy that we ran out but we didn’t want to let you down so we rented one from Avis. You can be sure next time we’ll have inventory and the condition of the car will be exactly as you ‘d expect from Budget”.
In his book titled, “The Customer”, he writes, “You can have the best environment in place but if you bring in pessimistic people who don’t smile and who don’t enjoy life you don’t have much to work with. At the Brisbane hotel, I am made to understand that they hire on three factors: Personality, personality and personality. The excellent service there, I am told reflects this policy. At all times, staff has to be diplomatic. To do that, you have to have confidence in yourself –you’ve got to project that. If you look defensive about it then the customer feels sensitive. If you are inexperienced you get flustered. There is a delicate balance youth and experience because there is a tedium factor built into almost any job.”
He further notes “The airlines now have in place regulations that allow cabin staff to work in that position as long as they want to. I see that as dangerous. It is important to have people who are constantly fresh and challenged. It is the role of management to insure against boredom and repetition by finding ways to make the job fun. Also we make an effort to shift our employees from one office to another and to alter their job tasks as much as possible. So when it comes to enthusiasm verses experience, I tend to favour both together. We are constantly looking for new training techniques to force-feed more experience into our new people. Conversely, if we find an enthusiastic older person willing to join the company - all well and good”.
Touching on Managers, he states “We find our most effective managers are good communicators who have regular meetings and consultations with our staff. According to an article in the wall street journal some 70% of all mangers fail in this category. Communication is one of the most difficult management tasks there is. according to a book entitled ‘Peoples Skills’ by Robert Bolton, 80% of the people who fail at work do so for one reason – they do not relate well to people. One’s productivity as a manager is greatly enhanced by the ability to communicate well. In the author’s words; A mechanical engineer mused, “I thought engineering training was all I would need. But I spend most of my time on people problems”. Certainly there is no better way than sabotaging the company’s performance than by failing to talk.”
Other insightful thoughts in Ansett’s book include “Sometimes all you need to do is say ‘Thank You’. These two words can probably solve 90% of all industrial relations problems. The experts spend too much time measuring the wrong things. Most of them would not know that 99% of all business failures are due to lack of customers. That aside, how much has failure to communicate with staff contributed to lack of customers? We previously mentioned the fact that if you are not serving customers, then you had better be serving the people who are. This turns the corporate pyramid upside down. The customer is at the top, followed by the employees. other parts of the company jockey for the next position, with senior managers and directors on the very bottom”.
Ansett cites McDonalds “As an outstanding example of a situation where the environment makes the people. What they accomplish is literally a miracle. They get kids-spoiled middle- class brats and streetwise slum kids – who fight with their parents and teachers, cannot keep their rooms clean and drop out of courses and get them to run the best fast food service organization on the planet. They do it with equal success anywhere in the world, from some bleak urban environments in the US where residents have given up hope to faraway places where the concept of service is entirely missing in the inhabitants’ genetic structure”.
He narrates ”In the past, many of these people would have found themselves in the menial job / welfare trap. Instead, the process of getting into a McDonald’s uniform seems to do wonders for them. They become bright, they smile, they are given enormous responsibilities, and they run their shops with a spit and polish Red Hostetter would have been proud of. Even kids who are just earning money while at university get caught up. For them it is probably their only opportunity to learn service values that they take into their future professional and managerial lives”.
Someone once said that any business with the right people in the right seats on the bus will head down the road to success. Bob Ansett’s philosophy expressed over 30 years ago perhaps echoes this as striking the right balance between personality, experience and skills is as relevant today… as it was then.
Extracts of this article first appeared in ‘Food & Accommodation’
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