Taking Action eNewsletter

Is Your Service Excellence Program Effective?

March 2010

In the past few months I have had several CEOs ask me how to design an effective Service Excellence Program. In every case, these companies have rediscovered the importance of taking good care of existing customers, especially during tough economic times. I hope that this summary will help you evaluate your existing program, and if you don’t have a program in place will help you avoid common causes of failure.

• The Service Excellence Program must recognize both process performance (consideration of customer expectations for quality, accuracy, responsiveness), and people performance (behavioral interactions), as key drivers of customer satisfaction and referrals. A formal method for identifying and following up on process performance improvement opportunities is necessary.


• The Service Excellence Program must be well organized, with clear accountabilities for execution of its various components, and well integrated into the organization structure (designated individuals with specific responsibilities).


• The Service Excellence Program must consider both internal (intra-department) and external customers.


• The people performance component of the Service Excellence Program must be built around specific, visible behaviors that are expected of all employees. Those service excellence behaviors (including service recovery behaviors), must support the organization’s Vision, Mission, and Core Values in a direct, clear, and simple way.


• The Service Excellence Program, especially the service excellence behaviors, must be fully integrated into the hiring process, orientation program, on-boarding process, role descriptions, performance appraisal criteria, and compensation criteria.


• The Service Excellence Program must be supported by an interactive, ongoing education program of service related topics.


• The Service Excellence Program must have an objective, engaging employee recognition component, wherein extraordinary service delivered by employees is recognized by other employees and management.


• The Service Excellence Program must be supported by a robust communication plan that, above all, ensures that there is structured, consistent information flow from managers to all employees, every week.


• The Service Excellence Program must incorporate tactics for “realtime” measurement and improvement of employee satisfaction.


• The Service Excellence Program must incorporate tactics for “realtime” measurement of internal and external customer satisfaction.

The time that you invest in program design will be repaid many times over by strengthened customer loyalty and increased likelihood of existing customers to re-purchase and refer.

If I can help you improve your approach to customer service, please let me know.

Warm personal regards,

Mr. Doug Williams
Chief Executive Officer
Email: doug@thedougwilliamsgroup.com
Phone: 305-598-9880