Service as a Business Strategy

Transcription

1 Service as a Business Strategy 10 steps to being customer driven By Rowdy (Ron) McLean J.P, M.B.A, F.A.I.M, C.C.M

2 Creating Excellence in Business, Service & People Service as a Business Strategy The purpose of a business is to create and keep customers. If you look after your customers the profits will look after themselves. Customer service is a unique business strategy. Most companies talk about it and their employees pretend to deliver it. Yet, very few organisations actually deliver it! These broken promises are the gap in the market. Very few businesses connect their promises in terms of the type of product, facility or service they market themselves as providing and the actual delivery of their products, facilities and services. Think about it for a second, if I asked you to name 5 businesses that provided you with outstanding service in the last few months, you would probably struggle to come up with 5, a lot of people struggle to come up with just 1! However if I asked you to come up with 5 businesses that had provided you with poor service you would struggle to stop at 5. There is a huge gap in the market in terms of service delivery. Customer Service is a unique business strategy. These broken promises are the gap in the market. 96% of customers don t complain, they just don t come back. The reason for it is because businesses don t deliver on their promise. As a result they are constantly trying to attract new customers to replace those they have lost. It costs between 6 and 10 times more to get a new customer as it does to keep an existing one! Become customer driven and customer focused and you will be surprised by the benefits.

3 Service as a Business Strategy Delivering what you promised in the way you promised at the time you promised it will result in: Fewer complaints Higher profits Creating Excellence in Business, Service & People These statements should be developed in conjunction with every employee in the organisation, so that everyone has an opportunity to buy into the vision and statement and take some ownership of it. Greater market share Less marketing costs Less employee turnover Less absenteeism Improved productivity To become customer driven you must integrate service standards and benchmarks into every level of the organisation. 1. Vision The organisation must decide what its service vision is. A statement that describes it s commitment to providing service to its customers, a promise to the customer that can be backed up by every employee. The worst vision or mission statements are those developed by management, printed on a plaque and hung inside the front door. The worst vision or mission statements are those developed by management, printed on a plaque and hung inside the front door. Employees don t support these statements because they have not had the opportunity for input. Some examples of the best service vision statements are Disneyland and Virgin.

4 Creating Excellence in Business, Service & People When Disneyland opened in 1955, the Disney mission statement was summed up in three simple words: We create happiness. Just over 50 years later, that basic idea has only been altered slightly. Today, the Disney mission statement reads: We create happiness by providing the finest in entertainment for people of all ages, everywhere. Richard Branson s Virgin Company states its vision is to be the consumer champion and they do this by delivering to their brand values, which are: Value for Money, Good Quality, Brilliant Customer Service, Innovative, Competitively Challenging and Fun. Service as a Business Strategy The vision or promise needs to be communicated both to the staff and to your customers. 2. Measure In order to create something, in this case Service Culture, we must first know what exists. There are four levels to this measurement, firstly, How do your customers perceive your service delivery? Knowing what your customers think of you and what they want from you is a key driver of business success. The vision or promise needs to be communicated both to the staff and to your customers. It should be in your advertising, on your website, part of your staff newsletter and part of every management meeting. Most organisations could not be bothered and that is why there is a huge gap in the market. Measuring the customers view can be done in several ways.

5 Service as a Business Strategy You can conduct a customer satisfaction survey. You can have survey cards in with orders and purchases. You can conduct focus groups. You can call customers that have brought from you. You can talk to customers in your store. Creating Excellence in Business, Service & People Most organisations believe employees were born with the ability to deliver good service, wrong! Whatever method you use, it should be done regularly and it should be communicated to everyone in the organisation. How do your employees see the organisations service delivery? Conducting an organisation wide survey about how employees see service delivery in the organisation allows you to see the depth of cultural change required to become truly customer focused. The survey should measure such things as service leadership, complaint handling and empowerment. The next measurement is a survey to discover your employees knowledge of the skills required to deliver service excellence. Most organisations believe employees were born with the ability to deliver good service, wrong! In the surveys we have conducted I am surprised by how little employees know about they key skills required to deliver good service. In order to develop a comprehensive training program we must know what skill levels exist so that we can develop a training program designed to bridge the gap.

6 Creating Excellence in Business, Service & People Lastly you need to enlist the services of a mystery shopper. We provide what is probably the most comprehensive mystery shopper service available, visit to find out about our Business Excellence Reports. The purpose of a mystery shopper program is to provide feedback on a typical customers experience with your organisation. This allows you to understand what you are doing well (and reward those involved) and discover what is not meeting your service benchmarks so that you can change the policy, behaviour or person involved. These reports should be done on a regular basis and the results conveyed to all employees. The only way to know how your customers see your business is to look at it through their eyes Daniel Scroggin Service as a Business Strategy 3. Plan A comprehensive training and rewards and recognition program should be developed to ensure that there is a continuing program of development. Most organisations have no service training programs or rewards and recognition program, many of those that do treat it as ad hoc, with no scheduling or consistency. The service training and rewards recognition program needs to be part of the strategic plan. This is to ensure that all levels and all employees of the organisation understand the importance of the key strategies for service delivery and standards and benchmarks for delivery. 4. Communicate Communicating the vision, standards, benchmarks performance and rewards is the key to an integrated delivery. Every meeting should have these items on their agenda. Regular staff meetings should be held to discuss the progress of your service culture initiatives.

7 Service as a Business Strategy Your staff newsletter should convey stories, tips and information. Creating Excellence in Business, Service & People Your website should carry service delivery information and service delivery should be a part of your annual report. Worry about being better; bigger will take care of itself. Think one customer at a time. Take care of each one the best way you can Gary Corner Communicate your service delivery in every way and in every medium you can. Also, make sure that it is done by someone with a passion for service delivery to ensure the message comes across with some emphasis rather than another empty statement or promise. 5. Recruit It is important that you recruit the right people for the right roles. It is no good having someone cranky and irritable deal with complaints, or someone who cannot smile greet your customers, or someone with an abrupt nature answer the phone. Some people were just not meant to have service roles. Some people were just not meant to have service roles. You need to be extremely rigorous with your recruiting practices. Remember these people will be dealing with your most important asset, your customers! And you want them to be ambassadors for your business. We have organisations who will reject a complete group of applications (hundreds) for a position and re-advertise until they get the right person, and the results are evident in their service delivery and their high levels of customer satisfaction and word of mouth recommendations. Also make sure you assess them regularly during their probation and let them go if they don t measure up.

8 Creating Excellence in Business, Service & People Without great employees you can never have great customer service Richard Gerson Service as a Business Strategy Most organisations induct their new recruits in Occupation Health and Safety, Industrial Relations and Conditions of Employment. This is probably the biggest problem I see in organisations, stuck with under delivering employees because they were not diligent during the probation period. 6. Induction Every new employee needs to be thoroughly inducted in service delivery. Before you let them deal with your valuable customers you must ensure they have the skills to deliver excellent service and understand the service standards and benchmarks. Too often organisations allow new employees to start dealing with customers straight away. Customers are far too valuable to risk a new employee upsetting them or delivering a level of service that does not match your standards or benchmarks. They either include service as part of this exercise (meaning it gets lost in the information overload) or don t include it at all. I suggest you carry out a separate service induction program for your employees ensuring they have the skills, know the benchmarks and have the product knowledge to deliver great service. Then buddy them up with one of your customer service stars so that they discover good standards and develop good service habits. 7. Train Train, train, train and continue to train! Customer service is a lot like golf. You do not become a great golfer with just one lesson.

9 Service as a Business Strategy Creating Excellence in Business, Service & People Customer service is a lot like golf. You do not become a great golfer with just one lesson. The same is true of customer service. All staff should be required to complete a series of customer service training programs in their first twelve months on the job. Behaviour that you want repeated must be rewarded. The reward program should be integrated over many levels with clear benchmarks and requirements. I suggest the following as a guide: At the completion of each session there should be an assessment done by a supervisor. Every staff member should also be required to complete ongoing refresher programs to ensure they remain proficient on service delivery. 8. Rewards and Recognition Your organisation should develop a comprehensive rewards and recognition program to support and enhance the service culture. Behaviour that you want repeated must be rewarded. a) Organisational. This reward should be shared by the whole organisation for achieving a goal or benchmark in relation to service. For example a certain level of customer satisfaction or number of new customers. b) Departmental. Each department should have its own target to achieve and be rewarded for achieving. This encourages departments to work together as a team and focus on service outcomes, a good benchmark would be the number of complaints received.

10 Creating Excellence in Business, Service & People c) Individual. There should be a system in place to provide instant rewards for employees that go above and beyond your service benchmarks. These are the shining stars, the example for everyone to follow. Remember behaviour you want repeated must be rewarded. Give them some movie tickets, block of chocolate, vouchers and change it around each month. Your stars will love it and your other staff will replicate the behaviour so they also get rewarded. Service as a Business Strategy 9. Empowerment How often do hear these statements: No, we can t No, we don t do that No, its company policy No, you will have to wait for a supervisor No, that s not my department No, I don t know These statements are delivered by employees who have not been empowered to make decisions, to solve problems, to look after the customer. To really become customer focused you need to build some flexibility into your organisation. Lastly, always thank your staff for their commitment to service at every opportunity. Acknowledge the positive impact staff delivering service excellence has on the business. To really become customer focused you need to build some flexibility into your organisation. Do this at meetings, in newsletters, articles and annual reports. What you talk about, comes about.

11 Service as a Business Strategy Creating Excellence in Business, Service & People Allow your employees to make decisions to satisfy your customers. Learning to find ways to say yes will create a much different environment for both your employees and your customers. Imagine the same statement above delivered with a yes! Review policies and procedures to ensure they are customer focused. Form focus groups to meet regularly and discuss what is working well and what could work better from a service perspective. Yes, we can Yes, we will do that for you Yes, its company policy, but may I suggest Yes, I will take care of that Yes, I will take you to that department Yes, I will find out for you 10. Manage Once you have started to build a serve culture you need to manage it on an ongoing basis. Measure what is happening through customer satisfaction surveys and mystery shopper reports. Assess and review your staff on a regular basis. Continue to train and review standards and benchmarks. Provide regular feedback and communication in relation to service delivery, targets and initiatives. Celebrate outcomes. Have a staff awards night or regular staff breakfasts, take everyone to the movies or have a party. Because if you become truly customer focused your business will grow and prosper, you will make more money and have fun in the process. Celebrate outcomes. Have a staff awards night or regular staff breakfasts, take everyone to the movies or have a party.

12 Creating Excellence in Business, Service & People I Know! Now you would like to create a service culture in your business. Service as a Business Strategy Rowdy (Ron) McLean is a leading expert on Customer Service. So here is a special offer to readers of this e-book. Receive a free consultation on how to create awesome service in your business valued at $500, simply serviceculture@creatingsynergy.com with the word e-book in the subject line. He is a fellow of the Customer Service Institute of Australia, the Australian Institute of Management and has a masters degree in business administration. Rowdy speaks on the topic of service at conferences, seminars and would be happy to speak to your team or organisation. His company Creating Synergy conducts customer service training programs and service culture development strategies.