Causes of conflict within an organization in which you are affiliated
Regardless of the industry, conflicts arise in every workplace. In order to safeguard the interests of your consumers and let the production team working hard as ever, it’s important to analyze the causes of organizational conflicts and find out ways to mitigate them. Nevertheless, the conviction that personal differences lead to conflicts is quite comforting, but not at all practical and productive.
Conflicts in an organization could be between co-workers, employees and customers or other external stakeholders, employees and suppliers and between managers and employees. However, one conflict that can completely destroy your business is between employees and customers. Even a single unsatisfactory incident can trigger your consumer’s mind to shoot a mail to the consumer board and defame your company’s profile on social media.
I work at Walgreens, a leading American pharmaceutical company that runs one of the biggest drug retailing chain in USA. Some of the major causes of customer –employee conflicts at Walgreens are listed below:
Poor communication: A communication gap or a failure to communicate effectively between employees and customers is the major cause of conflict at Walgreens. Poor communication results in poor customer service and reduced productivity.
Dissatisfied customers: A customer who finds himself mistreated by an individual customer service agent eventually becomes a dissatisfied customer. For example, at Walgreens, an argument between a customer and an employee will generally heat up on a pricing issue. Usually, the difference amount on which they argue is extremely small but owing to the aggressive argument, most customer service representatives fail to understand that modifying the price a little might actually convert a dissatisfied customer to a happy customer within seconds (Plowman, Kenneth. D, and Cybthia. Revelle, and Martha. Pien., 1995).
Poor performance: A pharmaceutical company is expected to work accurately and smartly. I have seen customers driving away either due to poor customer service provided to them or due to long waiting time. Walgreens’ inability to provide a timely service to the customers often frustrates them and they just don’t come back to us again.
Needs and Expectations: When employees ignore the actual needs of customers or tend to set impractical expectations. For example, making false commitments to customers regarding a promotional discount or regarding exceptional features of a product or service that never exists, might instigate conflict.
Managing conflicts at Walgreens
In order to resolve conflicts cordially, it’s critical that a store manager or a supervisor plays an important role. First things first, he/she should be willing to take an initiative to resolve conflicts by listening to both the parties and finding solutions that do not hamper the goodwill of company.
Calm down the angry customer: To bring all things on the table, it is important to calm down the angry customer first. Give him a glass of water and assure him that his concerns are our concerns and they will be resolved for sure. If accomplished properly, often 70% conflicts end at this stage itself.
Adopt an ‘open-door’ policy: Whether it’s a conflict between employees and external stakeholders or co-workers within an organization, an open door policy approach always works out best. As per the policy, employees can reach out to a senior level of management directly and seek resolution.
Give it a new name- ‘learning phase’: No matter how hard employers try to avoid them, conflicts do arise in a system and it’s the duty of a manager or the supervisor to resolve things amicably. In such an instance, instead of blaming one of the parties, he should try to make it a learning phase for both of them so that they know how to deal with similar situations in future. This will instigate proper communication between both parties and help them reach resolutions quickly.
References
Plowman, Kenneth. D, and Cybthia. Revelle, and Martha. Pien. (1995). Walgreens: A Case Study in Health Care Issues and Conflict Resolution. Journal of Public Relations Research, 7 (4),
