What is Service to you? Do you care? Does your organization give poor, good, or flag-waving service? If you are the owner of a company or a senior manager, do you care about what your customers think of you?
What is "good service?" It is the act of providing products and services for a price, and having the customer be happy and satisfied with you. What systems, procedures and incentives do you have in place, to help your employees to perform beyond your expectations? Systems allow your company to deliver a maximum standard of performance to your customers on a consistent basis. Systems help keep management and employees aware of why we are here. It's for the Customer! Sales people complain about employees/service departments not giving better service and employees/service people say they can't get it done. Where is the balance?
This is a good place for a lesson from my past. When I was a G.M./CEO for a large company in California, we were struggling to give better service. We were rapidly growing the business. The systems we were using were not working, so management and employees started to have brainstorming sessions to help us to learn how to give better service. We decided to establish teams of employees to find the solution. Let me explain some of the ideas and solutions we came up with:
Employees and Management Goals and New Procedures
1. Meet with other managers on a weekly basis to create ways to:
A. Solve problems. B. Improve and establish procedures where it is needed. C. Improve communications between departments. D. Create incentive programs.
2. Decrease the customer response time by:
A. Give them more guidance, so they can get the job completed. B. Reduce the number of repeat calls by training all our employees to be more effective. C. Encouraging our employees to have a better attitude.
3. Different employees are to take turns going to, sales, and management meetings to create better understanding between departments and management.
A. Set up a written schedule of training and meeting dates. B. Assign employees and managers to training schedules. C. Meet with employees and managers about future training programs.
There is a lot more we could say about the areas of training and communications. These are just a few observations, and I know you could probably add even more ideas. Everyone on the team needs to collaborate in a successful business venture. In the next article, let's continue by using some examples of great flag-waving service.
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About the Author
I worked my way up the ladder with a few companies, going from a sales person to the GM/CEO of First Choice Services, a consumer products company. In May 27, 1996 I got my BBA and in May 29, 2000 I received my MBA. In the near future, I hope to complete my PhD in Business Development.
