Service Standards Are
the Foundation Of Excellent
Customer Service
By David Saxby
We have all walked into a restaurant, bank or
convenience store and experienced great service. When we return to that
business, we expect the same level of service but sometimes are greeted by a
rude individual who could care less that we are alive. Such an experience
leaves a long-lasting impression.
So how can your utility create an excellent service experience for every
customer that touches your company, every single time? The answer is
consistency. How do you create consistency? By establishing customer service
standards throughout the company.
Here are some thoughts on identifying and implementing customer service
standards at your utility.
Step 1. Identify service standards that all your employees – those in
the office and in the field – should demonstrate when they interact with
customers. For your customer service representatives, that means greeting
every customer as they walk through the door in a warm and friendly manner
and showing appreciation for customers’ payments and service orders. It also
means using an energetic voice to welcome customers who call the company,
using customers’ names from their account records, thanking customers for
their calls and confirming they have answered all customer concerns. There’s
more: respond quickly to e-mails, use words that demonstrate to customers
your willingness to do whatever it takes to create solutions to their
problems, follow up when promised and deliver solutions when promised.
Your outside plant staff also interacts with customers every day. Do they
greet your business and residential customers in a friendly manner? Do they
use the customers’ names? Do they thank customers for their business at the
end of the interaction?
Step 2. Communicate the service standards to all employees.
Demonstrate the standards in training sessions with all employees to ensure
everyone understands them.
Step 3. Write down the most commonly asked questions posed by
customers (these situations could involve delinquent customers, new service
extensions, disconnecting customers, high bill inquiries and billing
issues). Write down various responses and approaches to these questions.
Identify solutions to challenges. Write down the different ways employees
approach these situations. Discuss what gets the best results as well as
what does not.
Step 4. Practice and reinforcement are required to turn a new skill
into an established behavior. The problem is that most adults don’t like
role playing or practice sessions. But if employees don’t practice a new
skill until they are confident with it, their tendency is to fall back on
old habits and do what they are accustomed to doing. How do you improve your
employees’ comfort level with learning and using new skills? Form practice
teams. Have one team be the customer and the other team be the company. Each
team should brainstorm first on the questions they want to ask the other
team. One person from each team should actually role play the situation.
Teammates can help out at any time with suggestions, questions or comments
that would help their team. That way, it becomes a team effort to
demonstrate the standards, rather than an individual effort. Reverse the
roles that each team plays. Everyone gets to be the company and the
customer.
Step 5. Make a simple standards checklist that can be placed by each
employee’s telephone or computer. It will help remind them of the steps that
lead to excellent service for every customer.
Step 6. Measure the results. You created service standards,
communicated them to every employee in the company and provided training to
help them learn new service skills. But how do you know if your employees
are consistently demonstrating these skills with customers? Hire a mystery
shopping company, a company that provides people who visit or call your
business posing as existing or new customers. The mystery shoppers will
check to see if the skills are being used. Hire a company to survey your new
customers after turn-on or installation of new service to see if your field
staff is demonstrating the new service standards.
Step 7. Everyone likes to receive recognition for doing a good job.
Turning a new skill into a behavior requires rewarding people when they get
it right and coaching them when they don’t. Managers need to become the
coach for their employees. This involves listening to customer interactions
and recorded calls, acknowledging employees with words of praise and
providing small incentives when they perform their job correctly. Individual
coaching may be needed to help employees who find it difficult to embrace
the new standards
Step 8. To create customer service consistency, every employee from
the top down must demonstrate the standards. Everyone must be held
accountable for providing excellent service. They also must understand the
consequences if they are unwilling to provide excellent service to every
customer.
Step 9. Review the processes that you use to provide service to your
customers. Many companies are task oriented rather than relationship
oriented. Employees are rewarded by the volume of calls they handle instead
of the quality of those calls. Many of us forget about building
relationships with the very people who keep us in business – our customers.
Whether or not a utility is in a competitive market, creating and then
breathing life into customer service standards impacts the company’s bottom
line. Developing and nurturing service standards that are consistently
delivered creates both satisfied and loyal customers and employees.
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David Saxby is president of Measure-X, a Phoenix,
Ariz.-based measurement, training and recognition company that specializes in
customer service and sales skill training for utility companies. He can be
reached at 888-644-5499 or via e-mail at
david@measure-x.com. Visit the Measure-X Web site at
www.measure-x.com.
