Service standards

Excerpts from
Unleashing Excellence, The Complete Guide to Ultimate Customer Service
Dennis Snow and Teri Yanovitch, Ch 4 The Service Philosophy and Service Standards

Imagine telling 5,000 bank employees: “Go build life-enhancing relationships with our customers,” providing no other guidance. There are many ways to build life-enhancing relationships, some of which may not be appropriate for a bank. There must be behavioral guidelines that provide direction on how employees are expected to build these life-enhancing relationships. Providing that guidance is the role of Service Standards.

Service Standards are the rules of engagement for providing customer service. Service Standards provide the behavioral template that leads to consistent service. They help employees at the moment of truth; those times they have to make a service decision.

Developing the Service Standards

• Look for the no-brainers. In healthcare, for example, something like accuracy or safety better be pretty close to the top of the hierarchy.
• Use your research to discover dissatisfier themes. What are those behaviors, oversights, etc. that seem to irritate customers? Most industries have core dissatisfiers that are common to that industry. Identifying potential customer dissatisfiers and implementing processes, systems, and behaviors that eliminate them is a wonderful way to gain a competitive edge.
• Look for those behaviors that wow customers.