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 yesterday.
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 touchstones.
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 touchstones.
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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