Ideal organization. Perfect customer service - right and wrong. A set of components for company success

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The ongoing revolution in communications, communications and automation, including mobile telephony, user-generated content (social media), the development of interactive and self-service technologies and, of course, the Internet, has profoundly impacted the nature of commercial interactions and the consumer experience overall. Therefore, many industries have introduced a variety of methods to increase efficiency, including those borrowed from the production sector (in particular, the experience of Toyota). What should the ideal consumer-focused company look like today, in light of the changes taking place and taking into account eternal values? What can you say about a company that thinks about customer service last?

Ideal company

Let's focus on the characteristics common to ideal companies, firms that satisfy their customers by providing them with outstanding, customer-focused service in all interactions. What kind of ideal company does a new or existing client imagine - high-tech or the most ordinary?

1. The client feels the “hospitality” of the ideal company even before his arrival - real or figurative. And this fact does not depend on which communication channel is used. Is it about the Internet? e-mail, phone, in social networks, chats or video conferences, the company's employees always greet clients and give them a specific, clear and friendly understanding of their position in the market, the brand and the company as a whole.

Companies often analyze the Internet, telephone, and other communications to make sure they function well enough to keep up with the times. Any channel through which a customer can contact a firm must be analyzed for effectiveness and user friendliness. This applies not only to a company's own sites, but also to third-party sites such as Google Places. (It's important to remember that consumers won't blame Google for misreporting hours and office locations. They will assume—and most often correctly—that the company hasn't bothered to update that information to be accurate.) In response to negative comments on Yelp's systems, TripAdvisor and similar forums usually provide polite responses so that a new user knows that even if the company is imperfect, it cares about its reputation, is trying to improve existing shortcomings and improve customer service.

2. The company can spoil the first impression of itself with barriers that are perceived by the consumer as a hindrance. An ideal company tries its best to remove all barriers so that the client immediately feels friendliness from the company. In the physical world, for example, you need to think about parking and transportation convenience for customers. Proposed driving directions must be perfectly accurate, preferably with GPS coordinates. If a customer needs to park on the street, the company should provide him with change for the machines and a reminder to pay for parking. You can even assign a dedicated employee to help clients. When logging online online, the registration process should be simple and accessible. Ideally, your site should not have any difficulties such as entering a code word. If you set filters to cut out spam or bots, then you need to provide a convenient audio option for people with low vision and for those who view your site on a smartphone keyboard that is not the most convenient to use. The consumer does not have to look through hundreds of names in the classifier to choose his own country - this can be easily determined by IP address or customer base.

3. Your employees should show a visible and genuine interest in customers. Keep an eye on this. Employees should remain friendly and courteous even in the most difficult situations client service. Employees should be friendly consciously, and not just to avoid disciplinary action.

4. The company must respect customers' desire for self-service... but still provide them with choice. A customer who chooses self-service should never be left without available support or opt out of such a system. You should not punish him in any way for the choice he made. For example, when a store has self-checkout, store employees are always on hand to help customers who encounter unexpected difficulties. At telephone communication clients always have the opportunity to contact the operator in a convenient way for you— by waiting for his response, pressing the appropriate key or saying a specific word. Websites usually have a FAQ (frequently asked questions) section. At the end of the answer to each question, you have the opportunity to contact the operator and receive further clarification if necessary.

5. Processes, technologies and systems must be designed to anticipate customer needs and desires. Service based on anticipation is not only about choosing the right staff. Yes, of course, an empathetic person who feels responsible for anticipating the client's wishes is very important. This is the central element of ideal service. But it is also important that your company's systems are tuned to the desires of customers - even before the desires themselves are voiced. Companies do this by making it clear to employees that their job is to learn to think like a customer, to observe and predict customer behavior, and to channel their wants and needs so that the company can predict what customers will want next. And this brings us to the critical next step: the acquired knowledge and relationships must be built into systems, processes and technologies.

Let me give you a simple example. It snowed heavily in Philadelphia during the winter and my flight was delayed two hours. No wonder I missed my connecting flight from Denver. But as soon as I stepped off the plane in Denver, thinking that I would now have to wait in an endless line, beg for a ticket to another plane, or call the 800 number and wait for an operator to answer, I was immediately approached by a Southwest employee who holding tickets for another flight in my hands. She asked my name and handed me the correct paperwork for the next flight in my desired direction.

6. The company must take into account the consumer's time constraints and his pace - and this factor must be considered paramount. An ideal company never wastes a client's time. In an ideal company you don't have to wait. Temporary needs and expectations individual customers are taken into account by both experienced, dedicated staff and sophisticated technological systems. For example, a tourist on vacation has a completely different attitude towards the Internet system and the signals received from it. He may well prefer personal communication or a telephone response from an attentive employee to scouring the Internet. Such a person will appreciate receptive software, which allows the user to answer a series of questions: “Not now.”

7. The emotional state and needs of the client are of great importance for any company.. Don't think of a customer as someone who called just to make a big purchase (or any purchase at all). Perhaps he calls or comes because of a temporary feeling of loneliness. Maybe he needs support related to your products, or maybe he has some questions. To ensure a long-lasting and profitable relationship with a client, you must take into account these non-commercial desires and purely human needs.

8. The Company must recognize and accommodate the unique circumstances of a particular customer's individual situation. In other words, employees need to understand that while the vast majority of customer interactions follow one of several typical scenarios, each customer interaction given client unique from his point of view. I once spoke at a conference of the Student and Youth Tourism Association (SYTA). A tour operator there told me what he faces every day: “No matter how many times I take government tours of Washington, DC, I remind myself that for this group of young people given the excursion may be the first and perhaps the last.”

What a great and precise attitude! But what role such attitude can play into company politics? Perhaps the company prides itself on fulfilling customer requests “within 12 hours,” and perhaps this promise is used in advertising. This is, of course, very likely if the client contacted the company with the first request. But forcing a client to wait 12 hours between requests if the answer to his first request was the words: “Please tell me what kind of operating system you use and I will give you the answer” is completely unacceptable. However, as sad as it is to admit, this is very typical for many companies. Yes, really, it may take the company 12 hours or even more to fix the problem, although it was stated in two, and not in one request. The ideal company understands this perfectly.

9. Standards exist - and are implemented in life. For example, in an expensive hotel you will never see a doorman standing with his back to a client trying to open the door. Why? Because that's how they are standards! The standard here is that doormen work as a team. They look at each other and signal to each other if someone comes up from behind. Doormen literally cover each other's backs. Thanks to this, the client has a feeling of hospitality and comfort in general.

10. Additional services are also standard. Ideal companies always offer something beyond existing standards. Admittedly, in difficult situations shareholders always tend to cut these additions first, but without them it will be impossible to differentiate your service. Buying an iPad from Apple, you know you can read e-books. Great. Industry leader Kindle offers the same service. And Nook. And Kobo. And Sony Reader. An “unexpected addition” helps you understand that you are dealing with an exceptional company - the ability to virtually “turn the pages” and read e-book like the most ordinary one, only printed on special paper.

Ideal service in the physical world is carried out in the same way. During the last economic downturn, Horst Schulze of the Ritz-Carlton said economic hardship was no excuse for a luxury hotel to give up "nice touches" such as daily changing bouquets in the rooms. Guests of such a hotel do not buy four walls and a ceiling, but a carefully thought-out sense of exclusivity. And if they don’t feel it, then they are unlikely to want to return.

11. The company should strive for efficiency, but in no case at the expense of the client. Service is a unique situation that does not always meet modern requirements for speed and constant improvement in efficiency. Yes, production techniques are used quite widely in the service. However, if you want to be ready for any consumer demands, then you will have to put up with inefficiency in the production sense of the word. It will be necessary to have an increased stock in the warehouse, and for quite a long period of time. Ideal companies understand when efficiency techniques (such as those demonstrated by the firm) can be used and when they are not applicable.

12. Customer experience must be constantly improved. As consumers, we all value convenience and familiarity with the process that makes ordering and purchasing products and services hassle-free. When I order something online from a company I've done business with before, I expect all the on-screen menus to look exactly the same as before. I want to see what I’m used to, and not have to relearn the ordering protocol. The same thing happens when I call the company that supplies my heating system with fuel. I expect the usual protocol of being given a price per gallon, offering a reasonable delivery time, and providing a driver who already knows what system I have in my home and how to use it so that my presence is not necessary.

However, while consumers value consistency, the ideal company recognizes that service needs to improve even to maintain a sense of consistency as consumer expectations continually increase.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, about 30 years after the invention and widespread use of the telephone, Marcel Proust wrote with his characteristic vividness that the telephone had begun to be taken for granted. People began to perceive the phone as ordinary household appliance and began to complain more about the static noise on the line than to admire this amazing miracle of new technology.

What Proust wrote about the telephone can easily be applied to any aspect of the consumer experience. Today, the period during which the perception of something new changes radically is much shorter than it was before. What was considered an incredible advance in customer service last year is quickly becoming commonplace, if not outright unacceptable. What seemed fast last week looks terribly slow today.

An ideal company understands this perfectly and is constantly improving. For example, retail network, opening new points, sets itself a very specific task: do new shop better than the previous one. Dot. This is the optimal path to improvement, which saves the company from unnecessary thoughts and regrets about mistakes made.

We will look at all 12 components in more detail a little later. Each of them has its own significance for consumers.

An example of a disaster: a fatal error in an ideal service

I hope that my list of 12 features that characterize a company with ideal customer service did not confuse you. And that's good - I prefer to deal with an unafraid reader. However, we constantly see examples of the opposite around us. There are many anti-consumer (and generally anti-collaboration) companies and firms in the world that have no intention of differentiating themselves from their competitors, rarely meet customer expectations, and certainly never exceed them in any way - except by accident. In an ideal company, all potentially destructive elements should be identified and eliminated. Therefore, you must analyze negative characteristics in their “natural” form. Let's take a moment to understand what an ideal company shouldn't be. Remember how inspired preachers paint pictures of hell before their flock. Let's talk about this abyss into which any company can collapse.

To make the example as accessible as possible, I invite you to join me and go grocery shopping, which you and I do every day. What could be more positive and humanly understandable than a well-funded, fully stocked and conveniently located grocery store? Well, let's go? We head to an expensive grocery store in a suburb that I won't name (although I'm sorely tempted again!). This is a branded boutique owned by a well-known corporation. The store is ideally located, both geographically and demographically. It is surrounded by private houses of quite wealthy citizens, where there are many old mansions. People with high level education, and within a radius of six kilometers there are four colleges, etc., etc. Let's start our shopping. Don't forget that we came looking for unpleasant surprises.

Entry and unnecessary barriers. Even before we're in the store, it's clear that interaction (or attempts at interaction) won't be easy. Before we go shopping, we check the website to check directions and opening hours, but find no information. Yes, the site has a live chat button. Let's try. Two unbearable minutes of waiting pass, and finally someone answers. Indeed, “someone”, because the person who answered does not introduce himself - most likely, this is some kind of automatic program, because we did not glean any useful information from these voice messages.

Having waved our hand at the store's website, we find it on Google Maps, where opening hours are also mentioned. Unfortunately, the hours listed on Google Maps and Google Places appear to be incorrect. (Actually, they were true 16 months ago, but since then the store hasn't bothered to contact Google and update the information, and because of this, customers like us often find themselves in front of closed doors.)

Let's try to remain calm in this situation too. On the second try, we arrive at the store's parking lot during the hours when it is actually open. The first noticeable obstacle turns out to be purely physical. Shopping carts are located in a “corral” that completely blocks a person in a wheelchair from exiting the disabled parking lot. Such a situation will not make the most positive impression on a disabled person, his friends and family members.

Arrogance and inattention of staff. And here we are in the store. We see a young saleswoman placing bottles of balsamic vinegar on the top shelf. She climbed onto a stepladder with the "tops of her thighs" facing directly toward the incoming customers. The saleswoman clearly doesn't know how to communicate with customers. She doesn't even greet us. Anything unusual? Unfortunately no. We walk around the store, but none of its employees, even those who facing us, and not other parts of the body, do not pay any attention to us. Nobody says hello. Doesn't smile. Doesn't offer help.

New imperial carts. Well, okay, they didn’t pay attention to us. Let's walk around the store with cute, but extremely inconvenient shopping carts. We need to buy something. It seems that everything is simple - if you have never tried to roll a cart on hard rubber wheels on a floor lined with fashionable ceramic tiles - with an uneven surface and large gaps between the tiles, filled with a thick mortar simulating handmade. The cart hobbles across this floor with a terrible roar. It seems that we have come under artillery fire. By the end of shopping, your hands become terribly numb.

We did it! And now we are already at the cash register. Having overcome all obstacles, we put it in the cart necessary products and dragged her to the cash register. And finally here she is: the cashier is the first human being who, by virtue of her official duties must communicate with us personally. Truly personal: face to face. Oh happiness! We are about to have a moment of human connection!

Roll your lip! They don't even notice us! The cashier is busy - she is chatting with other cashiers: telling them about her unsuccessful date yesterday. The conversation is extremely fascinating, and she is not stopped even by the need to twist her neck in order to be heard.

Angry that she had to interrupt the conversation, the cashier throws punched food into bags - cheese with a strong smell ends up in the same bag with equally smelling sushi, heavy apples crush fragile cookies into crumbs.

We could have hoped that, without bothering with human contact with us, the cashier would pay more attention to the correct packaging of the products, but, apparently, our hopes were not justified.

Flower disaster. Sometimes the strongest impressions from contact with a particular organization occur “at the edges”: at the very beginning and at the moment of completion. For me, the most terrible disappointment was visiting a flower shop in the same expensive grocery store. Take a look there with me, but this time remain an observer—something like a fly on the wall. Time? 18:45 - a normal working day (the store closes at 19:00, as it says on the front door, although Google has completely different information). I came in to buy flowers, but I still have no idea what kind of bouquet I need. For about three minutes I absentmindedly look at the flowers on the counters. The saleswoman asks if I have made my choice. I answer that not yet. She keeps insisting but doesn't offer any help or advice. Finally she sternly announces, “We close at seven.”

As politely as I can, I respond, “Actually, I think you should close after the last customer who came in before 7 p.m. has left the store.” To my amazement, the saleswoman reacts completely differently than I expected. She is completely sincerely surprised: “Really? I did not know that. I had so many problems closing even a minute after seven that I was convinced that by seven o'clock all the customers had to leave the store.".

How did such a striking example of what not to do come about? Let's go back to that grocery store again.

Against employees, against customers. My conversation with the saleswoman flower shop showed you everything you need to know about disastrously anti-consumer companies. They are not only against buyers, but also against own employees. They cause harm to employees and customers alike, forcing store clerks to literally push customers out of the store at exactly 7:00 p.m. All actions of this store are based on a superficial and extremely harmful desire to get their way at any cost. This approach leads to negative and sometimes downright terrifying results.

Lack of purpose and standards. Now let's take a deeper look at the mistakes that were made at the checkout. Firstly, the cashier was only thinking about her own professional responsibilities- punch through the goods, take money from us and throw the goods into bags. She had no intention of helping the store prosper. The thought that the same thing could be done humanely, so that the purchasing process would be as pleasant as possible for customers, clearly did not occur to her. This type of behavior by a store cashier is the end result of poor training and management.

Secondly, the cashier didn't have standards fulfillment of their duties. One of the standards had to be understanding which foods could be put in one bag and which would be better separated into different ones. It is not difficult to master such a standard, but its absence can completely ruin the buyer’s impressions of visiting a particular store. Standards should be developed, staff should be trained in them, and strict adherence to them should be reinforced. The devil is most often in the non-standardized details.

Thirdly, the cashier did not make the slightest effort to support her customers. She was not at all happy with them - she preferred to crane and twist her neck, risking injury, but chatting with her friends, and not at all doing her direct job, which (let me repeat) was to increase customer satisfaction, not about putting their purchases in bags. Why did the cashier behave this way? Most likely, she simply did not feel part of the company and did not consider herself obligated to improve customer satisfaction and thereby contribute to the success of the company.

Reasons why employees turn away from customers and do not interact with them. How can a salesperson not make contact with incoming customers or even turn to face them? How can one salesperson after another not pay attention to the customers who are in the store? Yes, they are busy - they display and adjust the layout of goods on the already sparkling shelves, and do other things. But all these people, like the cashier, do not perform their main task - they do not care about customers. Solve this problem without overhauling the entire corporate culture impossible.

Bumpy floors and improperly placed ramps. What do you say about an incorrectly located ramp that disabled people cannot use? What about the ceramic floor, which is not suitable for moving shopping carts? These mistakes are explained by the fact that the sellers and store management never once put themselves in the shoes of the customers - and not surprisingly, they leave their personal cars in a special parking lot and enter the store through other doors. Only a few of them know what it's like to enter through main entrance, leaving the parking lot for the disabled, etc. (The exception is young employees who collect carts in the parking lot and return them back to the store. If they reported an existing problem, senior managers did not listen to them, or even simply stated, that this is none of their business.) The motivation of the store staff is completely incorrect - people perform their duties in order to avoid punishment, instead of serving the prosperity of the store. Disabled parking has been provided for sign-out purposes only as such parking is required by local and national legislation. If the store management really thought about people with disabilities, then everything would be different. If store owners don't pay attention to the barriers that prevent people with disabilities from using their store—and even deliberately place barriers between the parking lot and the entrance—there must be an explanation. Apparently, this store simply wants to cut off a certain segment of the market base - the disabled and those who care for them.

Actions taken for the wrong reasons and therefore poorly executed are unique to bad companies. If a company is not flexible regarding work hours, it often receives low-quality results from employees, but they are obtained at a strictly defined time. Firms that treat sick leave unfairly or excessively can rest assured that all of their healthy employees will make full use of all scheduled sick leave days. Forgetting about the real security, and by simply trying to get rid of safety inspections, companies create dangerous workplaces. The result is low-quality customers—or no customers—because there is no law requiring people to shop there.

Yes, I guess that this is tedious - useful, I hope, but still boring... I'm glad to say that now we're moving on to something more fun.

So what do you think about all this?

Here are 12 characteristics that make ideal companies.

1. The ideal company welcomes customers - through any channels! And even before the client arrives - literally or figuratively. The company constantly analyzes the experience its customers receive through the Internet, telephone and other communication channels.
2. When a client arrives at a company, there should be no barriers in his way that could spoil his experience with the company.
3. The company's employees show sincere and deep interest in the client.
4. The company respects the customer's desire for self-service... but always provides the opportunity to move on to direct communication with employees.
5. The company has the processes, technologies and resources necessary to meet customer needs and desires. In other words, you need not only employees who sense what customers want, but also systems designed to satisfy their desires before those desires are even expressed.
6. The company must take into account the time constraints and wishes of the client. A client's time should never be wasted. The most important thing for a company is to take into account the pace needs and expectations of a particular client.
7. The emotional needs and state of mind of the client are extremely important. Company employees should be friendly and polite to customers, even if their calls have no immediate commercial value.
8. The company recognizes and takes into account the unique characteristics of the specific situation of a particular client. Even if the vast majority of interactions with a customer occur in one of several typical scenarios, employees must understand that each interaction is unique to a given customer from his point of view.
9. Standards exist - and they must be followed.
10. Additional amenities are standard. Without unexpected and pleasant additions, it is almost impossible to differentiate your service.
11. Efficiency is important, but it should never come at the expense of the client. A certain amount of inefficiency, anticipation (as opposed to strict timeliness), and excess inventory are sometimes necessary to ensure that a company is ready for any customer request.
12. The customer experience must be continually improved, often through continuous improvement techniques borrowed from manufacturing.

“Personnel decide everything” - this expression attributed to Joseph Stalin is increasingly relevant in our time. A professional and results-motivated employee is often able to replace many indifferent dropouts. In preparing this material, I tried to summarize personal experience work on several projects, organized a small survey on his blog and held about a dozen conversations with fellow managers of small and medium-sized businesses.

The subject of this study was the question of how relatively small investments create conditions so that knowledgeable, energetic and intelligent employees willingly come to work for the company and remain in it indefinitely, while maintaining interest in the work.

I note that we considered primarily companies operating in the field of the Internet and high technology. This area is closer and clearer to me. In addition, it is IT firms due to the shortage qualified personnel and the high “price of the head”, an intelligent specialist is more skilled than others in experiments to create physical and mental comfort for his employees.

However, I believe that the resulting recommendations are largely applicable to other industries, from financial services to the oil and gas industry. After all, working with personnel, in the end, is always an interaction at the “person-to-person” level, which means working with people’s expectations, hopes, ambitions and desires.

And one more important addition. It is well known that many large IT companies, for example, the American Google or the Russian Yandex, have already created such working conditions that their employees often call their place of employment a “dream company.” Managers of small firms, as a rule, respect this policy of business sharks, but they themselves believe that a corporation with multimillion-dollar income is one thing, and their small or medium business. We are supposedly small. Compared to Google, the cat cried for money. We survive as best we can.

However, the experience of introducing in small organizations some of the techniques that can be called constituent elements“dream companies” showed: firstly, many of them require almost no financial investments, and secondly, their competent use visibly increases the efficiency of employees and thus ensures a return on investment in people.

Below - in descending order of importance and effectiveness - is a list of what, in my opinion, forms the image of a “dream company” and motivates an employee to work effectively for the benefit of his or her organization. Some of what has been said is obvious to everyone, some is new, but in any case, it will be useful for every leader to rethink the recommendations given again.

1. People-oriented corporate culture
An employee should be psychologically comfortable surrounded by colleagues - superiors and subordinates. Corporate culture is not only common goals and objectives in competition, but also a friendly, positive team working in an atmosphere of trust and openness. With rare exceptions, none of this comes naturally.

Managers at all levels can and should influence the formation of the psychological climate and closely monitor that negative processes do not develop in the company. If conflicts arise, it is important to nip them in the bud. If people appear who carry the karma of defeatism, often get angry and have conflicts, you need to pay special attention to them, re-educate them, or part with them in a timely manner.

Every employee should feel psychological comfort and stability. Firm confidence in the future forms a very strong attachment to the employing company.

2. Interesting specialized tasks. Conditions for implementation
The employee’s involvement and the effectiveness of his work are higher, the more interested he is in solving the problems facing him. This obvious thing in the routine of management is often relegated to the background. However, after stability, the first thing a person looks for in work is the opportunity to realize himself in an area of ​​interest to him. Everyone strives to create something useful, something that could become a source of pride. Give him this opportunity.

3. Comfortable workspace
Create coziness and comfort for your people, and they will thank you. Comfortable work chairs and tables, a pleasant interior - all these are powerful advantages in the eyes of employees. If you want to earn additional loyalty points and are ready to spend money on square meters, then the presence of game rooms with computer and board games, sports equipment, rooms with TVs for watching sporting events together, etc.

The presence of a relaxation room in the office, where massage chairs can be placed, also contributes to creating a feeling of “at work - like at home”. Look, for example, at how the Moscow offices of Yandex and Google are structured.

4. Free food
These may be fully or partially company-paid lunches. In addition, the presence in the office of tea, coffee, juices, drinks, cookies and similar edible manifestations of the company’s love for its employees, with rare exceptions, gives rise to sincere gratitude in them. Feed your workers, let them be well-fed at your expense. This invariably adds loyalty.

5. Conditions for professional and personal growth
A thinking person (and a good specialist is always a thinking person) tends to strive for development. Both personal and professional. Help him with this. Support your employee's desire to grow professionally and personally. Listen carefully to his wishes to take part in a seminar, training, go to a conference or speak at it. Moral and financial support in this from the company will be highly appreciated by him.

6. Flexible schedule and the ability to work remotely
According to many psychologists, a person has three basic values: freedom, love and fulfillment. We have already talked about implementation. Love (at least in the form that a group of friends and colleagues can provide) was also affected. Complete freedom for every employee in a commercial structure is, of course, a utopia. But allowing people to feel free to do something is a useful practice.

If your business process allows you not to control the time of arrival and departure of employees and their location during working hours, but to look at the results of the work of each of them individually and the team as a whole, then it is better to do so. If someone, due to the lack of a whip over their head, loses efficiency and becomes discouraged, then maybe this is not the person worth working with?

7. Team-building corporate events
Majority Russian companies arrange general gatherings for New Year and the company's birthday. It happens that there are two or three more gatherings a year. But, as a rule, it all comes down to food and, of course, drinking. It’s good if you know how to conduct such events for the benefit of team building, without turning them into a banal drinking party. At the same time, it is important not to go to the other extreme and not turn the holiday into a boring meeting.

In addition to feasts, joint trips to nature, hikes, or even tourist trips effectively unite the team (I’ll give an example on this a little further). By doing things that allow people to feel like a united team, a group of like-minded people, you invariably increase both the attractiveness of your company as an employer and the effectiveness of your employees.

8. Options for a share (shares) of the company or bonuses directly tied to business performance
It must be said that options are a spicy topic. They can stimulate an employee very effectively, but not everyone. Observations and experience show that the opportunity to become a co-owner of a company, in fact, does not motivate most employees in any way. If you dig deeper, the truth is that many people do not need money at all beyond the amount that covers their most basic needs. They are subconsciously afraid of getting more because they don’t know what to do with this money.

At the same time, for ambitious and smart managers who, as they say, are “money-minded,” an option or bonus tied to the company’s business performance can be a big boost. In short, I would recommend using this tool carefully. It is necessary to gently control so that the money received is not excessive for each individual employee and, thus, does not deprive him of motivation and does not drive him into depression.

9. Non-financial incentives
Part corporate culture There may be a system of non-financial incentives. Its first component has nothing to do with money at all - these are honorary corporate titles, certificates, and diplomas. If you use this very component not in an “old-timer” way, but with a light touch of humor, which, however, does not detract from its significance, then it can work quite effectively.

Publicity of employee achievements can also be a powerful tool. From an antique honor board with photographs of the best and stories about their deeds, to the use of various media to notify the general public about an outstanding employee. By the way, with a subtle approach, raising the “production leader” to a pedestal can be successfully combined with the company’s PR tasks.

The second part of non-financial incentives could be various gym memberships, massage certificates, beauty salons, etc. For example, in one of our companies we add such gifts to cash prize. It is relatively inexpensive, and the effect is noticeably greater than the same amount issued in cash.

10. Salary is higher than the market average
I deliberately put this point last. And, frankly, I’m not sure that employees should be paid more than the market. But money still matters. Therefore, if you give your people a salary at least 5-10% above the average for their specialization (having followed most of the previous recommendations), then they will leave you only at gunpoint.

As an illustration to all of the above, I would like to cite a specific case from my good friend Konstantin Kalinov, whose company is developing a web service for selling air tickets and a number of related projects. He has a small company that employs about one and a half dozen people. This year, at the expense of his company, he took ALL employees with their family members to Thailand, to the island of Phuket, for almost six months. Away from the snowy St. Petersburg winter (here, by the way, video clip about their life there).

I will quote his response to a request to describe ways to motivate employees:

We have: free lunches, partial compensation for rent, MacBooks that you can pick up after dismissal, full compensation for moving to warm seas, more or less free schedule. People don't leave me.

Before finishing, a few words about the possible order of introducing elements of the “dream company”. If you decide to act in this direction, then first I would advise you to analyze the general situation in the company. Then decide where to start, which of the described elements will be most effective in your company? What can be done now and what should be put off? How much budget can you allocate for the planned internal modernization?

You can let the employees themselves dream up. For example, in one of the cases of implementing the above recommendations, we directly invited people to write on the company’s internal forum: what, in their opinion, is needed for the organization to become a “dream company.” There were a lot of jokes and gags (this is also not bad, by the way), but also a lot of constructive things that were taken into account by management.

It is important to understand that at first you, as a leader, will need to personally supervise many of the changes that occur. Although, if your budget allows, you can hire an assistant on these issues. Someone who will become, in a way, a “commissioner of the dream company”, making sure that it develops according to the described recommendations.

In the end, I want to emphasize once again that the “dream company” is not only and not so much external attributes, but rather the spirit and culture of interaction between team members, instilled by management. And it is from this that external manifestations and pleasant little things will organically flow that delight your subordinates.

Ideally, as a leader, you should lead by example in the way you approach your work and your colleagues. It’s good if you are able to take on the role of an intelligent and fair “adult”, the role of “senior” in the team is not by position, but by the degree of human maturity. This is what builds authority and trust.

It is good if you convey to your employees the idea that they spend most of their lives at the workplace. And first of all, it is important for them to make sure that this life passes meaningfully and fruitfully; so that the activity in which each of them is engaged is creative, develops and pleases them.

Let your people see meaning in what they do. More broadly, help them achieve harmony with themselves. As a result, your karma will improve, and the company's business indicators will improve.

Maxim Spiridonov

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