In almost every organisation I've worked with to improve customer experience, a familiar pattern tends to emerge. In my previous article, I explored why traditional customer service training rarely delivers consistent improvement for frontline staff.
One key pattern I’ve identified in sustaining high levels of customer service lies in middle management. Let’s break down a typical scenario.
Often, the top-performing team members—the ones who consistently deliver excellent customer experiences—are promoted to team leader, team manager, or branch manager roles. For many, this is their first foray into leadership. They’ve excelled at managing their own goals and performance, but now they’re suddenly responsible for an entire team.
This shift can be overwhelming. Lacking both leadership skills and a clear process, they may not know how to set team expectations or drive results. As a result, they often fall into an enabler role, focused on managing escalations and firefighting operational issues rather than leading proactively. Without the right tools and techniques to coach, mentor, and manage staff performance, middle managers can easily become stuck in this reactive cycle.
If this challenge isn’t addressed, complacency and lethargy often creep in at this level, stalling both team progress and customer service standards.
With our current project, we’re tackling this issue by focusing on three levels of middle management while simultaneously running training programs for frontline staff. Rather than relying solely on training, we're creating a mobile application designed to help managers oversee performance, collaborate with peers, and access valuable data for daily decision-making.
Stay tuned as we share more about the project’s progress and the impact it brings to the team.
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