My youngest son, Hank, works in an upscale country club restaurant. He works in what is known in the restaurant business as the “back of the house,” a.k.a. the kitchen. The hostess, waitresses, and bartenders work in what is known as the “front of the house.” Many businesses are set up in a similar way where one part of the company deals with the customers and the other part does not. The unfortunate issue with this design is that the back of the house never hears directly from the customer.
Every time we have eaten at the restaurant where my son works, Terrence the head chef, will pop out of the kitchen at least once during the service and interact and get feedback from the diners. Home Depot requires all its executives to work on the floor in direct contact with customers so they can not only understand the role of the front line employees but interact directly with the customers.
Successful businesses understand the need to expose back of the house employees to the front of the house. The goal of any small business is to make a product better and more in line with what the customer demands in this competitive environment. As a result, I think it is always a good thing to expose back of the house employees to the front every now and then to get direct feedback and gain a true appreciation of the customer’s experience.
The engineer should spend some time with the sales guy to see how the customer views the product. He could also spend a day with a field service representative so he can see first hand how the customer and the service technician interacts with the product. By learning more about the customer’s perspective, he could gain valuable insight into how to improve the product and become a better engineer.
Do you make it a point to have your back of the house employees spend some time in the front of the house?
