It serves every company’s best interests to organize its service delivery system
for answering every customer’s implied question: “What are you doing for me?” Stew
Leonard Jr., of Stew Leonard’s grocery store in Norwalk, CT, commented; “Nobody
walks in the door thinking ‘What can I do for Stew Leonard today?’ They walk in
here thinking ‘what can Stew Leonard do for me today? If he doesn’t do it, I’m not
going to come back.’ And I don’t blame them. Why should they?”
A Service Plan, employee training, consistent reinforcement of training, employee
motivation and service level monitoring followed by adjustments to elevate service
level whenever it drops… all this contributes to maintenance of a consistently high level of exceptional service.
When you have an organization that promotes the service approach throughout the
company, you augment the impact of service on sales. It is the reason that leading
companies emphasize service
so strongly - service strengthens sales.
Six organizational components enable a company to establish a strong customer service
base. They are:
- Strategy – a service plan
- Executive leadership
- Well trained and motivated front-line personnel
- Product and service design
- Infrastructure
- Techniques for measuring effectiveness
Service should be part of everyone’s job description. Service should be the umbrella
over your corporate organization plan for service delivery. Avoid pigeon-holing
customer service in a customer service “department.” That’s a fine way to sabotage
a service plan that’s ostensibly aimed at achieving total customer satisfaction.
The trouble is that having a department for being helpful to customers engenders
a “That’s not my job” mentality. One of the trademarks of the late comedian, Freddie
Prinze, was saying “That’s not my job” to every request from “please pass the salt”
to “Do you have the time?” What is needed is a whole-company customer service mentality.
Instead of pushing customer service into a closely kept
little department, it is
far better that every department does its bit in the customer service effort.
To promote strong service-mindedness among employees, one leading company routinely
rotates its people between staff and line positions. The theory behind this practice
is that line employees who deal directly with customers are more customer conscious.
So, sending staff to spend time inline jobs raises their customer consciousness
and also elevates customer awareness among their peers and thence throughout the
company.
Other companies re-train employees in customer service periodically, place posters
that remind employees of service and keep the posters fresh and promote the value of service for the employee and the company in company newsletters, newspapers and
pay cheque envelope stuffers.
Whatever you do however, when training employees, re-train them every six months,
don’t stage a huge, company-wide training event and never train again. The consequence
might be poor service, except for a couple of months after training. The reality
is that any training must be reinforced. Employees must be reminded, but not with
the same material over and over, otherwise they become bored and inattentive and
the training becomes ineffective. SQI has enough weapons in its training arsenal
that can train employees every six months for years without turning them off with
repetition.
What the customer defines as service has changes radically. Still, the basic nature
of service remains unchanged. It involves employee courtesy, product knowledge, helpfulness and enthusiasm. Quality service is orientation of all resources and
all people in a company toward customer satisfaction.
John Tschohl, founder and president of Service Quality Institute
Three Year Service Culture Plan