How to operationalize your service culture

I recently worked with a CEO whose organization was at a crossroads.

It was growing rapidly and many exciting opportunities lay ahead. The toughest choice was deciding how to prioritize everything.

At the same time, she knew the culture needed to change.

The last of the organization's founders had recently left. Things were clearly headed in a new direction, but not everyone agreed on what that looked like.

The CEO asked me what I thought she should do first. Should she focus on culture or refine the operational strategy?

"Both," I replied. Before adding, "But definitely culture first."

Why the cryptic response? Because the only way to truly build a service culture is to make it operational. You have to be able to see the culture in your employees' work:

• Consistently doing the right thing.
• Proactively solving problems.
• Obsessively thinking about customers.

Here are three questions to help you get there.

Question 1: Are you clear?

The first step to making your service culture operational is to define what you want people to do. You can't get your employees obsessed with customers until you can clearly explain what that looks like.

Start by creating a customer service vision, which is a shared definition of outstanding service. This isn't just something for the frontlines—the vision should guide leadership behaviors and strategic decisions, too.

The CEO decided to keep things simple.

I helped her organization write a new mission statement that served double-duty as a customer service vision. It spelled out exactly what the organization was trying to do for its customers.

Using the mission instead of a separate statement did two things:

1. There was one less statement for employees to memorize.
2. It put customers at the center of everything the organization did.

The best part?

It took just two hours to write. The new mission statement provided everyone with a clear North Star to guide their daily actions.

The CEO loved it. Her executive team loved it. The board of directors loved it, too. Most important, frontline employees loved it and took pride in its meaning.

You can use the same process to write a mission statement that your own employees will actually love and use.

Question #2: Are your employees clear?

Employee engagement is often presented as a fluffy, feel-good concept. Or even worse, the output of an annual survey that has nothing to do with your business.

It shouldn't be that way. This definition of employee engagement is easy to operationalize:

An engaged employee is deliberately contributing to organizational success.

You can tell if an employee is engaged when they can give clear and consistent answers to three questions:

1. What is our customer service vision? (Or mission, etc.)
2. What does it mean? (In your own words.)
3. How do you personally contribute?

This definition made a lot of sense to the CEO. She instantly understood she could evaluate an employee's level engagement by looking at their job performance.

It also helped clarify her role as the CEO:

• Making sure employees understood the mission.
• Helping employees understand how they were expected to contribute.
• Empowering them to do great work.

She decided to scrap the annual employee engagement survey after realizing it was a waste of time.

The CEO didn't need to wait for the results of an annual survey. Her daily dialogue with employees, customers, and other stakeholders yielded more tangible insights than an infrequent survey could ever reveal.

Question #3: Are you consistent?

The third step to operationalizing your service culture is aligning your strategic decisions with the customer service vision.

Culture is what people do, not what they say. Nothing will undermine a culture faster than making decisions that directly contradict the customer service mission or vision.

The CEO I worked with is working hard on being consistent, and it's going remarkably well.

Her organization just launched a new retail concept. It's starting with one store. The eventual goal is to expand nationally.

The mission statement has helped guide everything from product selection to store layout to customer service. Using the mission as a North Star made it easier to make good decisions that were consistent with the organization's brand.

The results have been phenomenal. The store looks beautiful, customers are excited, and employees are engaged. It just had its grand opening, where it drew a huge crowd and quickly exceeded its revenue goal.

Conclusion

Fluff equals failure when it comes to service culture.

Culture shouldn't be a side project, a special committee, or something you examine with an annual survey. It has to be a guide for how you do business.

Customer Obsessed shares practical advice for building a customer-focused culture. It draws upon lessons from?The Service Culture Handbook.