Organizations go to great lengths to differentiate themselves from one another, usually at much expense. In reality, it is often their service culture that has one of the biggest impacts on customers and helps a customer decide whether or not to do business with the organization
Service culture is comprised of many facets with each impacting customers and helping to determine the success or failure of customer service initiatives. Too often, organizations over-promise and under-deliver because their cultural and internal systems (infrastructure) do not have the ability to support customer service initiatives. For example, assume that the management of an organization has their marketing department develop a slick piece of literature describing all the benefits of a new product or service provided by a new corporate partner organization. They then establish a special 800 number for responses, but fail to hire additional staff or adequately train current employees to handle the customer calls. The project is likely doomed to fail.
Creating the Best Possible Service Culture
Two of the keys to building a successful organization through a positive service culture are an organization's employees and its management philosophy.
Employees
To deliver effective customer service, an organization needs to seriously commit to and invest in its frontline staff. This means paying attention to the following factors:
- Recruit and hire the best possible applicants;
- Pay a competitive or above competitive rate;
- Create a work environment that helps motivate employees;
- Provide adequate training and tools for them to do their job;
- Empower employees to make decisions commensurate with their experience, education and position level;
- Provide state of the art equipment and support to employees;
- Supervise and coach for success.
Management
For supervisors and management to be effective in supporting a positive service culture, they must:
- Be knowledgeable of the organization and its products and services, and of the industry, as well as, of the competition;
- Have good communication skills;
- Treat each employee fairly and with respect;
- Allow employees to take responsibility and to exercise limited decision-making related to their job and customers;
- Provide frequent and ongoing coaching and support to employees (praise as well as constructive feedback);
- Act as an employee advocate.
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recovered on 9 may 2011 to 9:36 hrs.
