Service matters more than you might think
Service Summary
Really great service needs joined up thinking
Typical Benefits
Enhanced customer experience
Improved employee experience
Operational efficiency uplift (reduced rework or removal of non value add work)
Complaints reduction and consequent management overhead reduced
Improved reputation and media attention
Supports cost of sales improvement and, indirectly, volume of sales
Overview
The service interaction between your organisation and your customers is an output. It’s an output that really matters.
It’s an output, a moment of truth if you like, repeated countless times every single day. It’s an output of how well your strategy, your organisational capabilities and processes, your infrastructure, products, people and culture combine to create the best experience possible for your customers. It’s amazing isn’t it how a few minutes of interaction can have so much contributing to it and how so much can be affected by the quality of that interaction.
Too often, organisations take a single dimension, an event / reaction approach to service … and most often, focus on it when something goes wrong.
My approach is to understand how well customer service is truly a core belief of your organisation and how well it is embedded throughout what I call your business ecosystem . I’ll test how strategy, capability, process, people and so on are aligned to create the best service interactions possible. I’ll look at the current hot spots – perhaps complaint handling, service recovery, people skills or service design to provide real evidence of quick wins.
Call it a holistic review. a joined up review. It can be designed in a way that’s bespoke to your organisation and which is a good cultural fit. But the reality is, unless you look at your organisation as a whole, your customer service output will always be sub optimal.
Because of the desire to get under the service skin of your organisation, timescales are always the subject of negotiation, affected as they are by data, people and specific scope of the work.
The critical output is always to equip your organisation with the insight, capabilities, knowledge and enthusiasm to continually and sustainably improve (in a cost effective way) your customers experience of doing business with your organisation.
Our Requirements of You
There aren’t too many requirements, but the most important one is that your organisation really wants to stand out as a class leading provider of customer service.
Availability of data (defined during the explore phase of the work), access to people (customers, employees, executives) and space to get those people together are really important.
Doing something as a result of the service review is critical, so by implication is an organisational capability to initiate and deliver effective change (although I can help if there’s not)
Our Commitments to You
* Provide support throughout service delivery using our World Class Professionals and Subject Matter Experts.
* Provide high quality deliverables in a timely manner and in line with agreements upon engagement with the client. (Any changes to this will be mutually agreed in writing, in advance, between all involved parties).
* Provide deep insights and genuine value-add in all possible areas throughout the engagement.
* Provide progress updates and feedback at regular intervals, agreed in advance or at the engagement ‘kick off session’.
* Respect all personal and professional development of client team members throughout the engagement.
Deliverables
My bespoke approach means, again, that deliverables are something agreed and managed as part of the relationship with your organisation.
Typically, they include:
- Specific hot spots resolved
- Analysis, recommendations and practical here and now action steps.
- Business case (if investment is required)
- Education (workshops for example), coaching and mentoring
- Change support
