Service Standards: A Double-Edged Sword
One of the increasingly common sights on company websites is their “Service Pledge” or “Service Standards” – a promise to customers to treat them in a particular way.
Given that customers expect to be treated “right”, this may go some way to maintaining satisfaction levels. The key, though, if we don’t want our promise to turn against us, is to find out what customers want and then work out how (and if) we can deliver.
Getting this information isn’t easy. For one thing, we don’t like hearing that we’re doing something wrong. That’s easily addressed – we have to be prepared to “bite the bullet”.
More difficult is asking the “right” questions. I’ve just been asked to complete a membership survey for a club and found myself puzzling over questions that weren’t particularly clear or didn’t actually address what I felt should be addressed. They were asking either the “wrong questions” or not being specific about what members were being asked to answer. For example, “What do you think about the décor?” may seem a good question, but what is the information they actually want? Members were asked to give a score from 1-5 (1 being worst, 5 being best). My “OK” (or 3) rating might be another member’s 5 (or 1).
Assuming we can obtain some useful information from our surveys, our next question is, “Can we address this and if so, how?” Do we need to train people, buy new equipment, put signs up, for example? Are our instructions for customers clear (remember, they may be to us)? Can we afford the changes required both now and in the longer-term (training, after all, is a continuing expense)?
After we get useful information, we need to develop our standards with those who will be responsible for implementing and maintaining them (i.e. our people). These are the ones who know what can and can’t be done, what the main areas for complaints (and praise) are, and what gets in customers’ way (e.g. slow management decision-making!). If we don’t engage our staff, we can’t expect them to engage with processes “forced” on them.
Once expectations (customers, staff and our own) have been raised, can we meet them (or better still, exceed) them?
High standards, if sustainable, are what separate our business from the others.
I have spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Customer Care, Leadership, Productivity, Selling, Strategy, Teamwork
What Are You Doing...
… to stay ahead of the competition?
Business requires us to be competitive and offer some kind of “edge” if we want to survive. For some, this may be easy if they’re a monopoly or a market leader and have no real close competition. As the advance of technology (to give one example) has shown though, today’s stars may become tomorrow’s also-rans.
As leaders, our job is to be thinking 5-10 years ahead whilst letting our direct reports concentrate on running the day-to-day business. This is easy in a large organisation, but in a small business where the owner is often Chief Executive Office, Head of Sales, Finance, Marketing, IT and HR, the time left for being Head of Planning is limited.
That said, the future’s important. Asking these questions may help us decide what it’ll look like:
- What do I/we do well compared to the competition?
- What do the competition do well compared to me?
- Where could I/we improve with minimal effort/cost?
- How can I do it?
- What might/could the competition do to hurt my business?
- What other opportunities might help my business?
- What other events might hurt my business?
- Where might new threats come from?
- Who do I need to develop or hire to take my business to the next level?
- What skills are becoming redundant?
One of the main goals of continually improving our businesses is to keep our customers aware of us as a leading player (and therefore willing to continue buying our product or service).
A secondary goal is to keep the competition just slightly off-balance and always looking to catch up. The changes don’t need to be huge (although people seem to expect quantum leaps in everything these days). Many organisations see small changes over a period of time, with the odd “major breakthrough” at intervals.
Apart from keeping the competition off balance, the process of asking all the questions above also helps us understand our business, markets and environment. What better way to improve ourselves as business people?
I have spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Leadership, Strategy
Real(istic) Planning
The impact of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines showed that, despite generous and prompt offers of aid, a lot wasn't getting through to start with.
In posts during July 2019, I wrote about planning for disasters. The questions to ask ourselves are:
- Do we have a plan? (Hopefully, by now, yes)
- What assumptions does it make?
- When and how was our plan last tested (Test, Test, TEST)?
- Does our recovery plan make realistic estimates based on factors that may hinder recovery (e.g. availability of electricity, telephone lines and/or mobile services, roads, emergency personnel, key supplies in the right quantities, etc)?
- What do we do if one or more is lacking?
In the case of Typhoon Haiyan, there was a plan in place, but aid was delayed in reaching victims because roads were blocked.
A major problem with natural disasters is that communication goes down and therefore the authorities don’t know where aid is needed, nor how much. If they can’t get there by road, they rely on air searches to pinpoint priority areas.
One of the most useful exercises I did with a client was to ask what the impact of snow on the roads would be to his business. In this case, the client was in office renovations, so he needed to have workers on site to do the work and get paid. That winter, there was snow on the roads which did disrupt businesses all over the country, but at least the client was prepared for it and could pre-warn clients of what might happen and how he would fix it.
If roads are blocked, staff can’t get to work, and the business will suffer, so how do we handle this? A simple solution like having remote access to office systems (assuming that internet services are running) could mean the difference between keeping and losing clients. Assuming mobile networks are working, businesses can call clients. Hopefully, clients will be suffering from the same problem as their staff can’t get to work either!
It all boils down to:
- What assumptions did we make?
- Have we tested them (can we)?
- What do we do if our assumptions don’t work out?
- How can we make sure that we’re in the best position to respond to what comes our way?
Test, test and test again!
I have spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Crisis Management, Leadership, Productivity, Strategy, Teamwork
