Turn Pressure into Opportunity

Current uncertainty in the construction industry, combined with the skills shortage and external pressures means that businesses often find their resources are stretched. How can we ensure that pressure doesn’t affect our customer experience? How can we turn these challenges in to opportunities?

Here’s our two-cents on how to get started…

• Insight is a valuable thing…

Think customer-centric! Being able to respond to the customer’s needs is just as important as responding to your own. In many ways these are closely linked but keeping the customer as the central focus will give you a consistent reference point. Take some time to really understand their needs and then you can work out how you’re going to achieve this. Use this ‘how’ bit as an opportunity to analyse your current processes, strategies, communication networks, skill levels of the team…this customer insight is a great way to hone in on those areas which need adapting or improving.

• Resourceful Thinking…

You don’t have to risk compromising your customer experience due to being short-staffed. It’s inevitable that your team will be stretched but encourage this to be seen as an opportunity to challenge themselves and learn new skills, rather than something that’s simply expected of them. As part of your insightful approach, discuss your teams’ needs and ensure they have the necessary skills to confidently deal with these responsibilities. Offer them the support they need to deliver a great customer experience; whether this take the form of mentoring, coaching or upskilling…help them be able to maximise on every opportunity and ensure your business continues to grow.

• Positive Attitude…

A bit of added pressure can be healthy, as it challenges us to step outside of our comfort zone, think outside the box, learn new skills, work efficiently as a team…however, when approached or packaged in the wrong way pressure can easily give rise to negative attitudes. This makes life hard and unpleasant for all team members, and is above all, unproductive! This advice may seem quite obvious but is unfortunately normally one of the first points to go out the window when an atmosphere becomes stressed and it can easily become a downward spiral. A positive attitude requires a conscious team effort but having that insight and resourceful thinking discussed above will make this infinitely easier!