It’s Customer Service Week!!!!

Every year the 1st week of October we celebrate the importance of the wonderful people that day in and day out serve and support customers.

A Thank you will not be enough to recognize and appreciate the service-focused people who, regardless of what’s going on in their life’s, their countries, the world! Show up to work every day ready to serve and service your needs. ?

Today, I want to take this opportunity to share some reminders about how to create a culture of Exceptional Service at your organization. ?

-????????? Have a clear, concise, precise, full of examples and role plays, training. As you hire people from different backgrounds remember customer service is not the same everywhere, show people how to do it right. The first training you must deliver to your new hires should be on How to Deliver the service you expect from them on every interaction. This should not be a dreadful training with lots of words, should be full of real life examples, real interactions and lots, lots, looooots of role plays. Allow people to practice what they learned

-????????? Show it, don’t tell it. Embody the service you want your people to deliver. Yes, coaching to your expectations is great and is definitely needed, but make sure that YOU, leaders, are the live representation of what you need from your people. Remember one of the most powerful coaching tools we have as a leader is to lead by example

-????????? Set expectations. Setting clear expectations of what you expect is very important in any business. Don’t expect people to just know or assume what you need. Set expectations on how you want the service to be delivered, what to do in the different scenarios and when to escalate

-????????? Have clear KPIs & goals based on your customer service expectations. People need to know how much customer service matters. Your goals should be attainable yet challenging so your collaborators always aim for the best

-????????? Incentives and bonuses should reflect what you want as an organization. Your customer service KPIs should hold the highest weight/give the highest bonus (if this is the most important indicator for you it must be reflected in people's payouts) and people should feel sufficiently and fairly rewarded for delivering exceptional service

-????????? Accountability. Inspect what you expect and ensure that there is clear accountability on lack of customer service. Another one is “non negotiables/red flags”. Create and share a list of the big no no's for your organization and build proper accountability measures around them

-????????? Create an atmosphere of service. This one is often neglected yet so important. Let me paint you a picture: one of your voice customer service agents come in in the morning, all energized and ready to deliver great service, during his break, he goes to the cafeteria and the clerk is rude to him which causes him to get in distress... what do you think will happen when he goes back to the phones? Will he be in the right mindset to deliver exceptional service?

Everyone in your organization from the people in the cafeteria, Managers, HR, security, Etc., Everyone should be embodying the service culture, treating all employees exactly how we want them to treat our customers

?And last but certainly not least, if you want a Customer Centric Culture you must have an Employee Centric Culture as service will be delivered by people and people must feel appreciated, care for, respected & well compensated to happily deliver the service you expect.