Improving your customers’ experience and the service you provide is no “quick fix” approach.  Sending staff on a customer care course and then expecting everything to change and improve has been proved to be “pie in the sky”.

The only truly successful way to face this challenge is to develop a service culture which puts your customers at the centre of everything that you do.  This is a long-term commitment and again invariably fails because not enough thought, planning and effort is given to it.

Essentially there are six service principles that need to be adhered to when undertaking a service culture development programme…if you fall down in any of them you will not fully develop the service culture you require!

Here are the first two:

1.  It starts at the top

All leaders, managers and supervisors must be committed to the programme, understand the benefits of it, support it and manage and motivate their teams to deliver it.

2. It must have a clear purpose/direction (a service strategy)

The programme must be based on some clear and simple messages that staff can understand, buy into and remember.  These include identifying your service aim/goal, values and commitments and core behaviours and they must be linked to your company vision and mission statement.

Look out for more service principles in future management tips.

Management Tip written by Stuart Graham – Developing People Trainer/Consultant and customer service specialist