Service Culture Support

Specialize in the run-around. Doing business with a company should be a choice, not a chore. But unfortunately, many companies make receiving service very difficult for their customers.

Companies on the naughty list aren’t streamlined. Customers have to give the same information to one person after another as they’re passed from department to department seeking help. Departments are so siloed that customers can feel like they aren’t even talking to people who work at the same company.

Generally, companies try to stay on their best behavior all year long by applying these Customer Service Tips. But during this holiday season—with decked halls, crowded malls, shrinking bank accounts, and frayed nerves—providing great service is even more critical than usual. Much like Santa, customers have their own “naughty or nice list,” and they won’t hesitate to give you the business equivalent of a stocking full of coal (i.e., taking their business somewhere else) if you make your way into the wrong column.

Struggling with bad service? Yeah, us too. But before you unleash on the next bumbling waiter or clueless salesclerk, hear the words of RON KAUFMAN, a global service consultant who has been on a 20-year crusade to improve service standards in Singapore. Here he tells Monica Pitrelli that getting good service in Singapore is not only possible – it’s easy – as long as you check your attitude at the door.

Travelers coming through the New York City area’s three airports—La Guardia, JFK, and Newark—might soon feel the need to double check that they aren’t walking through the set of a science fiction movie. That’s because the airports are introducing some high-tech help in the form of “Ava”—a life-sized, computer-generated female avatar. She’ll provide answers to airport patrons’ common questions. Ava the Avatar offers a fun, exciting way to improve customer service for weary travelers.

A great service culture is always a product of a whole architecture that includes education, service processes and structures that support customer-focused behavior.

Most customer-service improvement efforts fail to provide this type of architecture because their design misses, in particular, the strong impact of structure on behavior. Structure may include reporting relationships or physical structures that best facilitate service process. The designers are wary of changing structures to support service outcomes because such change is emotionally charged, takes a significant amount of effort and requires intense commitment. Yet, few individuals or departments can be effective and shine unless their organizational and physical structures are aligned with their brand’s customer service promise.

Each year we move forward into a wonderful space of creation for the upcoming year. We also have an opportunity to look back at the past year, and then to look forward, to make adjustments to improve the quality of service for our customers, vendors, employees, and community.

The right organizational structure facilitates superior service, sharing of views, rapid decisions, flexible execution and quick responses to unexpected opportunities or problems.

‘Chain of command’ may be good for a marching army, but it has real limitations for creating new service value in a dynamic global market. Customer expectations can change in a minute. How fast can your company respond?

When thinking about improving your company’s service culture, it’s also a good idea to take a look at your overarching company culture.

Do you know what your company culture is like? Is it defined?

Company culture can evolve over a long time, through the actions of its founding members and the people they hire. If there is not a concerted effort to develop a company’s culture at its outset, it will be naturally and unconsciously formed over time.