S o, is it just me, or has every­one else no­ticed an un­mis­tak­able rise in crosstalk at front­line coun­ters these days? I don’t think that it’s a fig­ment of my imag­i­na­tion. It seems as if every­where I go, there are end­less con­ver­sa­tions hap­pen­ing be­hind the coun­ters that have noth­ing to do with my trans­ac­tion.

Hon­est­ly, it’s a men­ace that needs to be stopped. If not, cus­tomers like me, who have an affin­i­ty for front­line eti­quette, will be­gin to de­fect. The prob­lem with de­fec­tion is that be­cause this phe­nom­e­non is so wide­spread, the de­fec­tion op­tions have be­come pret­ty slim.

Now, while cross-talk­ing is not a new oc­cur­rence, to­day it car­ries a cer­tain lev­el of au­dac­i­ty. In the past, the front­line em­ploy­ees would have paused (some­times) if the cus­tomer looked of­fend­ed at the lev­el of rude­ness. Not so these days. They con­tin­ue their con­ver­sa­tions while eye­balling the cus­tomer. At those times when I have point­ed out my dis­in­ter­est in their pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions, the em­ploy­ees have stopped, but not with­out cast­ing the most scathing looks in my di­rec­tion.

Front­line eti­quette is an in­te­gral part of the rules of pro­fes­sion­al con­duct, which al­lows the cus­tomer to feel re­spect­ed, val­i­dat­ed and val­ued. Pro­fes­sion­al con­duct ac­ti­vates the cus­tomer’s emo­tion­al sens­es and al­lows the cus­tomer to in­ter­act with em­ploy­ees who un­der­stand so­cial­ly ac­cept­able rules of en­gage­ment.

The pay­off here is that cus­tomer con­flict is min­imised. The busi­ness­es that are smart enough to pair front­line eti­quette, pro­fes­sion­al con­duct and trans­ac­tion ef­fi­cien­cy re­lease cus­tomer bliss. This for­mu­la turns out to be a huge prompt for re­peat busi­ness and big­ger share of the cus­tomer’s wal­let.

The prob­lem with some front­line en­coun­ters is that rude­ness, lack of man­ners and crude com­mu­ni­ca­tion are laps­es in be­hav­iour that can es­ca­late quick­ly in­to con­flict sit­u­a­tions. In many cas­es, not even man­age­r­i­al in­ter­ven­tion can re­pair the dam­age to the brand rep­u­ta­tion. The best op­tion in these sce­nar­ios would have been for the break­down to not have oc­curred in the first place.

When a busi­ness takes steps to pre-empt dis­rup­tions like these, the need to re­pos­sess squan­dered good­will from ill-fat­ed en­coun­ters does not arise. Sit­u­a­tions are nav­i­gat­ed so deft­ly and with such tact by front­line staff that there is lit­tle need to es­ca­late is­sues up the chain of com­mand. De­ci­sions are tak­en close to the cus­tomer and guess what? Rou­tine trans­ac­tions do not feel like bat­tles.

The over­all mis­sion of in­vest­ing in front­line eti­quette is to en­sure that the cus­tomer’s en­counter is not doomed from the start. A bad be­gin­ning in the form of ball-drop­ping is not the best first im­pres­sion that a busi­ness should sell to a cus­tomer.

We’ve been con­tem­plat­ing the vis­i­ble prob­lems re­lat­ing to poor front­line eti­quette. The big­ger prob­lems are those that are hid­den. The cost in­cludes ir­repara­ble rep­u­ta­tion­al ero­sion, loss of cus­tomer con­fi­dence and pro­longed weak­en­ing of the op­er­a­tional sys­tems that keep the cus­tomer’s need mov­ing to res­o­lu­tion.

One of the high­est hid­den costs is the ex­is­tence of a lead­er­ship blind spot that al­lows this front­line weak­ness to per­sist. Some lead­ers are so far re­moved from the front­line ex­pe­ri­ence that they nev­er grasp ei­ther the cus­tomer’s pain points or the en­dem­ic op­er­a­tional weak­ness­es.

There is so much over-re­liance on sur­veys that the lived ex­pe­ri­ence in the front­line trench­es is lost. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, front­line eti­quette that pre­serves the start of the cus­tomer jour­ney is not treat­ed as a busi­ness strat­e­gy.

At­tack­ing the prob­lem has to start with a busi­ness en­quiry. “Do we have a front­line eti­quette prob­lem?”

I be­lieve that many busi­ness­es do, if I pay at­ten­tion to the many cus­tomers who air their griev­ances on a dai­ly ba­sis.

So, the sec­ond point of en­quiry has to be weigh­ing the ac­tion of in­vest­ing ver­sus in­ac­tion re­gard­ing the ex­ist­ing prob­lem, avoid­ing an ex­pen­di­ture, com­pared to dou­bling the cost of slip­page.The defin­ing ques­tion be­comes, “In the long run, which pay­ment will be more cost­ly?”