“It’s Hard To Buy Class A Talent With Class C Money” – Or, Don’t Look for Great Customer Service from Resentful Workers

It’s pretty tough to provide good customer service with workers who resent their jobs.

This is not what you want!

Think about it.  If a person arrives at work, for a job that exists to serve the needs of the customer (and many, many jobs exist for this very reason), and the person does not want to be at work, you’re going to have a pretty big customer service deficiency problem.  And, if the worker resents the company, the boss, the co-workers, that’s going to result in ripple effects that end up making the customer far less than satisfied.

And, one way to create a resentful worker is to underpay that worker.

Underpaying is not the only way to create resentment – but it is a big way.  And you can make that even worse by overworking, and then underpaying.

This is the message of this article:  If Cosi Wants to Make a Profit, It Needs to Increase Wages:  The CEO of Cosi recently promised investors he would reverse the chain’s money-losing streak by improving customer service. Not a bad idea, argues Daniel Gross, but first he needs to increase wages.

Here are some key excerpts:

The company is now working on ways to make service better, faster, more friendly and engaged—“Class A,” as (Cosi CEO) Edwards called it…
Too few bosses recognize that asking fewer employees to do the work of more employees can be damaging to morale. But Edwards didn’t make the next logical leap. Class A service is provided by satisfied, happy workers. Happy, satisfied workers tend to draw happiness and satisfaction largely from wages.
But Cosi wants its employees to be on-the-ball, quick, engaging, smiling, committed, and accurate—all for wages that aren’t much higher than the minimum required by law.
It’s disappointing, though hardly surprising, that in a 45-minute call, neither company executives nor investors raised the possibility that one of the antidotes for crappy customer service might be paying higher wages. The people who can provide the kind of service that Cosi wants exist in this world. But the company is clearly not attracting them at the wages it is offering.
It’s hard to buy Class A talent with Class C money. (emphasis added).

We read plenty about employee engagement and employee morale.  Money alone does not solve all problems.  But too little money in the pockets of the workers comes close to being a sure-fire path to disappointing outcomes.  In other words, underpaying will probably (maybe definitely) result in less-than-stellar talent, and less-than-stellar results.