Chapter 31 Employees are also customers

Zhang Yong, who was born in selling Mala Tang, knows that Haidilao's front-line employees are in the hands of Haidilao's "Dinghaishenzhen needle" to win through service.He often tells his employees: No matter whether Haidilao succeeds or fails, it must start from the grassroots; the front line is the most important, because customers are on the front line. In fact, this principle is common sense, not only Zhang Yong understands it, but everyone understands it.As the saying goes: Those who know the leakage of the house are in Yuxia, and those who know the loss of government are in the ruling and opposition parties.But it is not so easy to implement this principle well.

When the company is big, there must be managers at all levels.Which is more important, the problems that managers have to deal with or the problems that employees have to deal with?For the vast majority of enterprises, the boss is of course the most important, and then one level is more important than the next level; thus, bureaucracy is formed. The obedience culture of the Chinese is particularly prone to bureaucracy. As Haidilao continues to grow, bureaucracy naturally breeds.For example, Zhang Yong used to visit various stores by himself, but now Haidilao has unknowingly formed the practice of Zhang Yong picking up the plane every time he goes to a local leader.

Zhang Yong realized this problem.Zhang Yong, who likes to go to extremes, uses his unique way to fight against what he thinks is wrong.Zhang Yong said in his New Year’s speech to employees in 2006: “When you are talking to me, your mobile phone rings, and your employees come to you, we will stop the conversation, and you give priority to the matters between you and the employees; When you talk to the staff, the customer needs help, you and the staff have to stop the conversation, and the first thing to do is to help the customer immediately. This is the priority law I talked about centered on the customer satisfaction rate. With the increase of age, I am now gradually Got it, the definition of 'customer' should be interpreted more broadly - including our employees."

Zhang Yong raised employees to the position of customers, the reason is self-evident: if employees are also customers, then employees are naturally more important than leaders.However, Zhang Yong's reasoning is not so perfect. The correct statement should be: when it comes to formulating company strategies and systems, leaders are important; when it comes to serving customers, employees are important. However, overcorrection must be overcorrected, and the correct statement of peace and stability is the most useless! What Zhang Yong said in Haidilao is an instruction and a system. Haidilao has a cadre team with strong execution ability who fully agree with Zhang Yong's values.

What is valuable about them is that they can put Zhang Yong's imperfect system into practice. Haidilao’s chief financial officer, Gou Yiqun, is Haidilao’s most educated executive. Before joining Haidilao, he taught accounting at a school.When Haidilao first went to Xi'an to open a store, he helped Haidilao do the accounting.As I was doing it, I was attracted by Haidilao. I lost my teaching position at the school and joined this team of migrant workers. He cited such an example when educating Haidilao's financial staff. He said: "Today when I was talking to Li Jing, the cost accountant of Haidilao Xi'an, she said excitedly: What do we do? This is because of her When I went to the Haidilao store to check the cost on New Year's Day this year, I saw that there was not enough manpower and the business was too busy, so I temporarily put aside financial work and went into the kitchen to help the kitchen staff wash the dishes for a long time.

"Afterwards, she was deeply moved by the words of an ordinary employee. The employee said: No financial staff can insist on washing dishes here for half a day. Therefore, it triggered Li Jing's thinking about 'what are we doing'. "What are our responsibilities as financial personnel? This is a topic we have heard many times. Our responsibilities are of course service, supervision, control and accounting. We are the financial assistants of the store manager. But what is the implementation of these responsibilities to a point? Then It is to do what is most beneficial to Haidilao at the most suitable time.

"If a cost accountant checks the speed of serving food, he finds that the speed is not up to standard, so he goes to the serving room and finds that there are a lot of menus backlogged. At this time, he has two choices. One is to record the problem and prepare to report the problem to the The manager reflected; the second is to put down the record and inspection work, help serve the food immediately, and understand the root cause of the problem during the process of serving the food, but he has to work overtime at night to complete the copywriting work of the cost control table that he must complete.

"In reality, which method will most of our financial staff choose? It must be the first one. Why is this happening? I believe that most of Haidilao's financial staff are not opposed to helping in the store, but they all think that the financial affairs should be completed first. This principle sounds right at first glance, the wages of financial staff are generally twice as high as that of waiters, and it is a waste to do the work of waiters. "But when we thought this way, we forgot our fundamental problem as Haidilao's financial personnel, which led to Li Jing's question of 'what do we do'. All our work revolves around the fundamental principle of satisfying customers .If 'customer satisfaction' is threatened, Haidilao will cease to exist and everything we do will lose its meaning, including our cost control sheet.

"Therefore, putting down what you are doing and immediately devoting yourself to satisfying customers is the correct approach for Haidilao's financial staff. "Does that mean that financial work is not important? Of course not. The problem is that our direct participation in business practice is not contradictory to doing financial work well. Taking the example just now, if the problem of slow service is occasional, Then it will definitely not affect the financial staff to do the financial work well. On the contrary, isn't it the ultimate goal of our financial work to help business personnel discover and solve problems, thereby improving efficiency?

"Therefore, in order to do a good job in the financial work, it is also good to occasionally work overtime in the store to help out (of course I do not encourage everyone to give up rest and work overtime for a long time, it must be inefficient). "Some people may ask, what if I need to go to the kitchen to help every day (it must be admitted that this phenomenon may exist in our company)? It must be that there is a problem with our management system, so we need to understand it clearly and report it to the higher-level leaders. "It is undeniable that some of our financial personnel have artificially put themselves in a higher position, thinking that they cannot do things like serving dishes and washing dishes. Although this kind of thinking is not mainstream, it does exist. If we If you don’t pay attention to it, it will spread. Therefore, every colleague is asked to reflect on himself, if this kind of thought is reflected in your work, I will definitely remove you from the team of Haidilao’s financial staff.”

After reading Director Gou's speech, I gasped as a former cost accountant. It seems that it is not only the waiters that make Haidilao different. Haidilao now has tens of thousands of employees.Haidilao's headquarters is located in a very inconspicuous office building near the South Third Ring Road in Beijing. The total area is only 500 square meters, including half a mezzanine; square meters. Compared with the less luxurious decoration of Haidilao restaurant, Haidilao headquarters still looks too shabby. Shabby?Not shabby! If employees are customers, cadres are service personnel; if they are service personnel, naturally they should not be so grand! People are not stupid and need to be reminded rather than educated.Normal people can tell who is the most important in an enterprise at a glance.