Why All Great Service Starts With Signature Standards
I had the great pleasure of presenting my keynote ‘Creating a Customer Focused Culture’ last week for an amazing client and one of the key-take aways for many delegates and leaders was the importance of signature standards.
Building a customer-focused culture starts with identifying and describing what excellent service looks like. That includes clearly defined standards and behaviours for which the organisation wants to be known. They provide clarity for the individual, the team and leadership.
Without them, customer service is left to individual interpretation, which can vary depending on the person, their background and experience and can lead to inconsistency of service delivery. When I speak with organisations and leaders about raising the capability of their people in customer service skills, the first question I ask is, ‘What documented service standards do you have in place?’ You can’t count on people to deliver an extraordinary experience if they don’t know what is expected of them.
“All good performance starts with clear goals”
— Ken Blanchard
There are many ways to create service standards. The most successful I’ve seen involve customers, leadership and teams. It is an incredibly engaging process that allows creativity and thoughtful input from a range of stakeholders and the most powerful standards are created with team input.
I recently worked with Lounge Lovers, a furniture company that was keen to keep lifting the level of customer service in their delivery team. One of the first steps was working with the team and leaders to develop standards and behaviours they felt would deliver a superior service experience. The customer experience of purchasing with Lounge Lovers is either in store or online. However, the organisation recognises the crucial role of delivery drivers in the overall customer journey and experience. Even though they already had very positive customer feedback, they identified an opportunity to take customer experience to the next level. Rather than simply training the team to deliver outstanding service, the first step was creating service standards for which they wanted to be known.
Through an interactive workshop, I helped the team to create a fabulous set of standards and behaviours, and I can honestly say the final result is one of my all-time favourites. They are simple, easy to follow, caring and from the heart. Some of the standards include;
We are happy to see our customers and greet them with a smile and use their name
We are eager to go the extra mile wherever possible, for example unpacking for the elderly and recommending after care with products
We are aware of time windows and proactively update the customer if we are going to be outside the window and communicate any delays
We have clean shoes and wipe our boots before entering a customer's home
The team were proud and excited to bring these to life. Engagement in living the standards is always significantly higher when the team has had input. Senior leadership endorsed the standards and the team trained to apply them. They have been socialised throughout the team and are used in ongoing orientation, onboarding and training. Soon after the standards were introduced, I was thrilled to receive an email from the Head of People who shared “Following the customer service training that Monique delivered to our drivers, the customer satisfaction scores have gone up every month and recently hit 4.92 out of 5 which is world class.”
Creating a customer-focused culture is not just about aspirations; it's about setting clear standards and behaviours that reflect your organisation's commitment to excellence. Signature standards, like those developed with Lounge Lovers, are a powerful tool for achieving this. They provide the roadmap for delivering exceptional customer experiences and ensure consistency across your team. So, I encourage you to take the first step in shaping your customer service success story and setting people up for success.