Thinking through and planning a customer service strategy is critical to the development of a strong service culture.

Organizations need to incorporate customer service into their business goals and those strategies should be incorporated into employee goals to ensure the organization reaches their customer service objectives.

Employees only perform at the level they are managed and it takes great leadership to help employees understand the importance of the customer experience. This is why it is important to have a strategy to help create and reinforce a service culture.

1.  Create a Customer Service Vision

The first step in creating a customer service strategy is communicating the customer service vision to employees. Employees need to understand what the vision and organizational goals are for customer service and understand their responsibility to help achieve that vision.

An organization that shares a customer service vision, and teaches customer service skills, will provide a better customer service experience than an organization that leaves the front-line employees untrained and unprepared for dealing with customer issues.

2.  Assess Customer Needs

Organizations often fail, and waste valuable resources, creating products and services that they thought the customer wanted, only to find out it was not what the customer wanted at all. The trick is to find out what it is the customer wants and put together plans to meet those needs.

Organizations can’t meet the needs of their customers without understanding what they want. The first step in a customer improvement initiative is to talk to the customers to find out their perception of the services being provided and determining what their needs and expectations are.

A customer needs assessment is done by soliciting feedback through focus groups, satisfaction surveys, or customer comment cards, and developing a comprehensive plan to meet and exceed the customer needs.

There are lots of survey software available. One I like is SurveyGizmo which is an easy to use online survey tool. It’s a pretty fun tool and you can play with it for free.  You should try it and see what your customers tell you!

Keep in mind that customer needs and expectations are a moving target. What a customer wants today will be very different from what the customer wants a year or five years down the road.  As things change, expectations and needs change also.

3.  Hire the Right Employees

Hiring with the customer in mind is another step in an overall strategy for strong customer service. Screening employees and ensuring that they possess the disposition and skill set to help support a strong customer service environment is important. Skills can be taught but attitude and personality cannot. It’s a sad fact but not everyone should interact with customers.

4.  Set Goals for Customer Service 

Once customer needs and expectations are identified and customer satisfaction is measured, it is time to create goals for achieving customer satisfaction.

Employees need to understand what the target is so they can help the organization reach their corporate objectives. For example, if you operate a customer call centre, a goal might be to answer all calls within X number of minutes and hold employees accountable to that standard. If the standard can’t be met, figure out why and fix it.

5.  Train on Service Skills

If you hire right, your employees will have a natural ability to serve your customers well.  However, everyone can benefit from practical teaching on the organization’s approach to customer service.

The training should explain how the organization would like the employee to behave in every situation and should help employees understand how to respond to their customers.  Employees need to know what you want them to do.

For example, teach them how to respond to customer complaints, how to be responsive to customers, how to meet customer needs, when to perform service recovery, how to answer the phone and your organizations standards for service.

6.  Hold People Accountable

Employees should have a good understanding of how their service to the customer affects the organization’s overall performance and need to be held accountable for achieving customer satisfaction goals. This is part of a comprehensive performance management system and should be part of the cultural norm.

For example, share customer satisfaction data with your employees and confront employees when they are not demonstrating the desired behaviours.

7.  Reward and Recognise Good Service

There should be a well thought out system for acknowledging and rewarding employees for good customer service. Employees need positive reinforcement and should be rewarded when they demonstrate the desired behaviours of a strong customer service culture.

Having a strong vision and strategy for customer service is a critical component to the success of any organization. Organizations need to identify who their customers are, what they want and develop strategies to achieve those customer requirements. A strong customer service strategy is what separates the successful organizations from the rest.

For more information on measuring customer satisfaction check out Measuring Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty.

Example Customer Service Standards

Every organisation should have a basic expectation for employees to provide good customer service.  Many businesses will define their standards of service and train employees on how they are expected to behave when interacting with customers.

But before we can discuss customer service standards, we first need to identify and understand the different customer groups.

Every organisation has two kinds of customers:

External Customers:   Those who purchase a product or service.

Internal Customers:   Anyone within the organisation who at any time, is dependent on anyone else within the organisation

For each of these customers groups, there are behaviours that can add to a positive service experience. Following are some examples of service standards of behaviour that will affect (if consistently demonstrated) great customer service.  Many of these standards can have measures attached to them for performance appraisal purposes.

This example can be used as a training tool and should be reviewed with the employee.  As with many training tools, it is always good to have the employee sign a copy and keep it in their file so there is a record that the expectation was discussed.

External Customers

• We will greet our customers in a courteous and professional manner.
• We will listen effectively to our customers’ requests and promptly take the necessary actions to assist them. We will keep our customers informed of unexpected delays in service.
• We will inform our customers of normal process time, when they can expect completion and any delays that may arise in the process.
• We will touch base with our customers to update them as to where we are in the process.
• We will respond to website questions/requests within 24 hours during normal business hours.
• We will respond to applicants (employee/volunteer) within 24 hours of normal process time to let them know when they can expect completion and any delays that may arise in the process.
• We will finish our encounters with our customers in a courteous and professional way.

Internal Customers

• We will interact with each other in a courteous and professional manner.
• We will inform our internal customers of normal process time, when they can expect completion and any delays that may arise in the process.
• We will touch base with our internal customers daily, either by e-mail or phone, to update them as to where we are in the process.
• We will work to resolve issues with co-workers and other departments by discussing problems directly and working toward agreed upon solutions.
• We will be considerate, cooperative and helpful to every staff member to assure quality services.
• We will hold ourselves and each other accountable for addressing inappropriate comments and behaviours.

Telephone Etiquette

• When at our desks, we will answer the phone within two rings.
• We will identify ourselves when we answer.
• We will listen to the caller’s request and assist the caller accordingly.
• If we cannot assist the caller, we will direct the call to the appropriate person. Before transferring the call, we will obtain the caller’s permission and provide the caller with the name and extension number of the person who will be helping the caller.
• We will obtain the caller’s permission before placing the call “on hold” by asking and waiting for a response before initiating the hold function.
• We will end the conversation in a courteous and professional way by thanking the caller. We will wait for the caller to hang up first.
• We will notify our customers that someone is unavailable by saying, “He/She is unavailable. Is this an urgent issue or may I take a message?”

Voice Mail

• We will respond to voice mails within 24 hours during normal business hours.
• We will update our voice mail greeting, advising callers when we will be out of the office for an extended period of time (1/2 day or longer), informing callers of when we will return and who they may contact with questions (if applicable).

E-mail

• We will respond to e-mails within 24 hours during normal business hours.
• We will update our e-mail notification message when we will be out of the office for an extended period of time (full day or more). We will indicate our expected return date and indicate a contact person (if applicable).

General

• We will make our goal to exceed the expectations of all of our customer groups.
• We will work to anticipate the needs of those we serve by proactively working to meet their needs.
• We will hold ourselves and each other accountable for our service commitment.
• We will be conscious of our communication style (i.e.; audible voice, eye contact when speaking to someone, tone of voice) and communicate in a professional manner.
• We will make a conscious effort to compliment co-workers when their actions comply with these standards.

Taking care of all customer groups is key to business success.  Investing the time to create service standards, and holding employees accountable for adhering to standards, is a basic management practice that should be incorporated into a structured performance management process.

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