How deeply is customer service embedded in your culture? I came up with some kind of a checklist that I wish to share with you today.
- Does your company policy clearly communicate that customer happiness is a priority? Do your employees understand clearly the implications of rendering good or bad customer service?
- Do you have a rewards and recognition programs that acknowledge people’s contribution to service excellence?
- Are your employees trained and competent enough to serve? Do you hire employees who are customer service-oriented? Is everyone trained to provide your company’s brand of service and not just the front liners? Is it part of your employee orientation and on-boarding program?
- Do you track your service performance? Do you thoroughly analyze your processes on a regular basis and identify how you can improve your service at critical customer touch points?
- Do you take a look at your organizational environment and fix issues that hamper speedy and quality delivery of products and services,like politics, squabbling and blaming?
- Do you make it easy for your customers to give feedback or complain? Are your employees motivated to track feedback and complaints and not hide them in order to cover their backs?
- Are leaders clear about service priorities? Are they able to demonstrate good customer service? Do they facilitate the creation of an environment ideal for good customer service?
- Are your employees skilled to handle customer complaints in a non-defensive manner? Do you track how they are able to help solve the problems of complaining customers?
- Do you process customer complaints and feedback, flow them through the departments concerned so that they can improve their service?
- Have you institutionalized some kind of service recovery guidelines and procedures that people must follow?
I believe that in order for the employees to demonstrate customer-centered-ness, the organization must show seriousness in focusing on everything that has to do with making customers happy. It starts from writing your policies to hiring your people and training them, to creating a work environment that encourages cooperation, to developing management systems that continually enhances the speed and quality of service and product deliver, and up to proper handling of customer dissatisfaction and wooing them back to continue trusting your organization.
If you said no to many of the questions above, maybe it’s time to start considering having them.
Related Course: Service Excellence Workshop