Potbelly Empowers its Employees, Makes Customers Hungry for More

"Just so you know, your lunch will be on us today."

She was not responding to a formal customer complaint. She was not echoing an offer approved by her supervisor. The Potbelly Sandwich Shop employee recognized her organization’s failure to deliver a customer’s order with the appropriate timeliness and accuracy. She recognized that the customer, though silent, was upset.

She acted.

A simple formula for success, the employee’s behavior is disappointingly rare within the customer service community. Few agents can be bothered to recognize a customer’s frustration. Even fewer can be vexed to empathize with that frustration. Fewer, still, allow that empathy to drive action.

Even more tragic about the state of customer service is that the select few agents willing to truly do what is best for customers often lack the means to do so. Unable to offer unscripted solutions to customers, empathetic agents are forced to embark on the same course as that traveled by disconnected agents: one of apathy and inaction.

The customers with whom they are interacting, therefore, are forced to remain on a road of frustration and dissatisfaction.

Thanks to the aforementioned scenario, I know Potbelly is not an organization from which indifference grows. Attentive, understanding and passionate, the agent who recognized—and resolved—a problem deserves commendation for buying into the notion of customer-centricity. Not content to let concern for the customer be a mere creed posted on the wall, she embodies her business’ alleged commitment to creating the best possible restaurant experience.

But her personal sense of customer-centricity would have meant nothing had Potbelly not empowered her to compensate for poor customer experiences. She is able to be customer-centric because she is a good brand representative, but she is able to be an effective one only because her business allows her to be. If policy required her to jump through hoops to offer discounts—as is the case in many organizations—her compassion would have offered no discernible value to the actual customer.

Most impressive about Potbelly’s form of empowerment is the fact that it seems to hinge on doing the right thing. As noted, the customer whose order was delayed due to a staff error did not ask for a free sandwich. She did not demand restitution or to speak with a manager. She did not even outright declare her frustration.

Adhering to an "if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it" mantra—or, in this case, an "if it ain’t vocalized, ignore it" approach—a lesser organization would not have fostered an environment in which an agent felt comfortable proactively accepting accountability for apotential bout of customer frustration.

Moreover, this particular agent acted without any assurance that her offer would preserve—or drive—the disgruntled customer’s business. In fact, given the extensive availability of comparable sandwich shops in New York City, a practical operator might question whether anything would have been enough to earn or retain the customer’s loyalty.

Not a rebate for a future purchase, the employee’s offer came sans any conditions or expectations. It emerged because the business did not deliver on its promise to the customer, and to right-minded agents and customers, that warrants action without attached strings.

The beauty of the action resulting from that empowerment is the fact that it, ultimately, will not go down as a pure cost. As an onlooker, I was impressed enough by the business to gain newfound respect for Potbelly and share the positive experience with 110K CCW Digital members. Doing the thing, if it is unconditionally the right thing, can absolutely be tantamount to doing the lucrative thing.

This is reality. Odds are good that your contact center and front line service teams, no matter how well-managed, are populated with some dead weight. You surely have some employees who are not living up to the high standard required of an agent in today’s age of the customer.

Train those agents. Coach those agents. But do so with consideration of the following question: what happens when those agents become perfect? Does your business environment allow them to utilize that perfection to improve customer experiences?