FIVE STEPS
TO BETTER CUSTOMER SERVICE
Step 1
Invite all your staff, or at least all the people in your department, and
ask them to describe the kind of company they would like to see your organisation
become. Appoint a facilitator to lead the meeting and a scribe to capture
the ideas on a whiteboard, and ask staff to put themselves in the position
of CEO of the company. Then ask them to brainstorm words and phrases that
describe the company they would want to lead to succeed in this crowded
and competitive market full of demanding customers who want everything
for free yester-day.
Next, ask your staff to brainstorm words and phrases that describe the
type of experience your customers would have to receive if you were to
become the kind of company they have just described. Again, capture these
ideas on the whiteboard. Finally, ask staff to brainstorm words and phrases
that describe how they would have to behave, both collectively and individually,
if customers were to receive the experience they believe customers should
experience.
Step 2
Ask for two small teams of three to four volunteers to take the lists of
words and phrases and re-work them into a coherent document. Give the first
and third lists to one team and ask them to combine them into a statement
describing your corporate culture. Give the second list to the other team
and ask them to produce a customer charter. They will need to remove duplications,
clarify some of the points and organise them all into a concise readable
document. The statements should be very specific and describe how staff
will think and behave, and what customers will see happen, and what the
outcome will be for them. The end result will be two documents that you
can use as touch-stones.
Step 3
Bring staff together again and present the two revised documents. Lead
a discussion to make sure that everyone is happy with the content of each.
Tell them you do not want them to argue about the words, but you do want
to make sure they are happy with the concepts.
Once they are, ask each staff member to sign the
documents. Then post these in the reception area
of your company and copies around the workplace,
including in staff room. Because Social psychology tells us that if people
commit themselves publicly to doing things, they are more likely to actually
do them, there is a great deal of power in the symbolic gesture of everyone ‘signing
off ’ on the two touch-stones.
Step 4
Publish the customer charter so that all customers and prospective customers
can see them. This charter is a promise to your customers of the type of
experience they can expect to receive when they deal with you. Make sure
the charter is all about what you will do for your customers. Do not produce
a charter like the one I saw recently in the new train service between
Brisbane airport, the city and the Gold Coast. It listed six things the
company would do for the customer and one was a telephone number. It then
listed 15 things the customer had to do and at the bottom it said customers
would be fined for violating the rules.
Use this charter to drive your customer surveys. Ask customers questions
that will let you know whether your customers believe they are receiving
the experience you promised. Share these results with staff and in cases
where you are not delivering, put together teams to identify and fix the
problems.
Step 5
Use the document describing the corporate culture to run the company internally.
This will tell you what kind of people you need to hire, what they should
be told at induction and what kind of training you need to give them. This
document, especially the statements about staff behaviour, will provide
the basis for your performance appraisal system. What could be simpler?
Everyone has agreed how they should behave so all you have to do is discover
if they are behaving that way. How will you know? Ask their internal customers.
Do a 360 degree survey where their colleagues, supervisors, direct reports
and other internal customers can comment on how they are behaving.
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