How do you engage yourself in a routine job?

On my previous posts I shared with you my opinion on WHY shall we sell Maintenance to our customers. Now, put yourself into the Technician shoes: HOW will you engage yourself in this kind of a routine job? What kind of professional satisfaction can bring you following a checks sequence and replacing vehicle filters or oils?

In my opinion the answer stays in two factors:

·         How Maintenance goes beyond the current technical skills.

·         Build up the willpower to provide continuous improved quality

 Courtesy to: http://www.vakil.org/tag/purpose/

According to Tony Robbins each human being has 6 psychological needs:

1.    Certainty: my comfort zone where I have everything under control

2.     Variety: the “spice” of my life

3.     Significance: I want to feel unique, special etc.

4.     Connection/Love: it makes me feel less scary

5.     Growth & Contribution:  it makes me feel fulfilled

Have you encounter Technicians who are just focused on the technical details of the Maintenance job? Who are complaining about the boring routine of performing it? And, because of this, they perform it in their own way? Have you found 16 ways of performing Maintenance in a 16 Technicians Workshop? If yes, what did you think about them? Did you start a blaming game or you tried to answer to:

What kind of psychological need they fulfil by behaving like this? How can I break this behaviour and lift the Maintenance to Growth & Contribution needs fulfilment? How can I link this to the customer satisfaction? One solution comes from Tony Robbins: How to get through to others?

I invite you to use this platform to share your comments about it: What do you think and how do you feel reading my series of questions? Is the Maintenance the only routine job where this kind of thinking applies?

 

Next in series: How do you build up organisational routine?

Maintenance: why to sell it - supplier perspective

On my previous post,” Maintenance: why to sell it – customer perspective”, I shared with you my opinion on how to identify the customer needs on a deeper level.  As you saw I just let the topic open by avoiding giving you a selling recipe and by offering you a relevant opening for a question list. My opinion is only behaving like this, being genuinely interested on the customer business you may play a consultant role and offer a customised service solution.  

Today I propose you to debate the answer to the WHY question from the supplier perspective.
Let’s structure the supplier needs on 4 levels:
1.       Customer relationship
Maintenance supposes a frequency based relationship, you meet the customer on a regular basis, at least once/year; do it in a proper way and you will:
·         discover early new purchase needs;
·         give the customer peace of mind, by showing him the current vehicle status and by preventing major breakdowns;
·         strengthen the relationship and your image by supporting the customer to operate his fleet in the most effective way – praise him for the good things he does and offer him optimizations solutions on improvement areas
2.       Employee satisfaction
We have here the biggest barrier to overcome; technicians usually see Maintenance as a low level job; help them understand the impact of their job. When I was school principal I faced the same issue with the cleaning personnel. Until I told them their job is not to make hallways or classrooms shining, but to keep the kids healthy. That was the moment they stopped asking me how to do their job; they knew how to do it because they understood why to do it. Follow my next post for more about how to motivate technicians to perform the Maintenance job.
3.       Business operations
 Maintenance helps you:
·         plan the operations better, because it’s a routine job with clear time & parts reservation
·         sell more services, because you may find additional jobs
·         develop more services, because you identify new needs on an early basis
4.       Cash flow:
Being a frequency based relationship Maintenance helps you control the cash in either by pre-planning the jobs, either by signing Maintenance contracts.
What else would you add in order to be able to offer the best tailored Maintenance program for your customers?

Next post:  Maintenance: how to perform it – lean perspective