If you want to be known as a
world-class customer service
organization, you must have a
strong service vision that clearly
communicates your company’s
service culture to all of your
employees.
This service vision articulates
the underlying purpose of why
your organization exists and
offers customers something
they can’t get elsewhere. The
level of service you wish to provide must be established before
many other aspects of your
organization can take shape.
The service vision influences
hiring standards, training, leadership philosophies as well as
your overall business model.
There are two critical parts in
implementing a successful service vision:
- Finding the words that will
properly articulate your company’s purpose and vision to
customers and employees. - Consistently marketing
the service vision internally to
your employees and making
the connection of how each of
their roles impact and support
that service vision.
Creating a service vision is
a lot like creating a mission statement for the
organization. It should be a
brief sentence. That may
sound easy, but if it takes
your leadership team less
than 30 hours to develop,
your service vision will
probably have no meaning.
A service vision should be
something senior management debates. It must be
created from the company’s legacy. It is never the
product or service that you
sell; rather, it is the underlying purpose of why your
company is in existence.
Every great service company
is a storytelling company. The company should be constantly
telling stories of how employees
deliver on the service vision to
customers. Telling these stories
daily keeps the service philosophy front and center in the
mind of every employee and
puts a burden on both existing
and new employees to continue
that legacy.
Once you have a strong service vision, you want to support
it with service brand promises,
which are keywords, phrases,
quotes and “isms” that are
repeated over and over.
To create your own service
brand promise:
- Define what business you
are in - List what you sell
- Determine your “priceless”
- Identify the customers’
long-term benefits of doing
business with your company - Figure out how to make
price irrelevant
A service brand promise does
not always have to be something
you advertise to the public. It is
an internal marketing tool that
reinforces your service vision.
I found a very effective way of
helping organizations figure out
their service brand promise by
borrowing from the MasterCard
“Priceless” commercials. Picture
MasterCard using your organization in its next commercial;
what would be your company’s
priceless tagline?
When doing this exercise,
most organizations don’t think
big enough. For example, I
worked with a financial services
company that helps people plan
for retirement. Management’s
first attempt at a priceless
tagline was “20 percent return on your retirement investment.”
Boring!
So, I asked, “Why do your
clients want a 20 percent annual
return?”
My clients responded, “So
they can create wealth.”
“Why do they want to create
wealth?”
“So they can have something
to retire on.”
“Why do they need something
to retire on?”
“So they don’t have to work
till the day they die and so their
standard of living doesn’t
change.”
After having this type of dialogue, they created a new service brand promise: “Being able
to retire five years earlier than
you expected and maintain your
standard of living.” Priceless.
Like any great marketing campaign, just coming up with
clever slogans is not enough to
consistently get your message
out to your target audience. In
this case, your target audience
is every employee in your
organization.
Use a similar approach to
what you use with your customers — storytelling and constant references to how your
organization lives its service
brand promise.
Phrases, slogans and creative
titles don’t change the culture.
But they are effective aids in
reminding every person the role
that comes with his or her position. It is ultimately management’s daily responsibility to
constantly demonstrate how
each department supports and
impacts the service vision of the
organization, which, in turn,
drives the customers’ experience
and their satisfaction level.
JOHN R. DIJULIUS III is the author of “Secret Service: Hidden Systems That Deliver Unforgettable
Customer Service” and “What’s The Secret.” He is also president of The DiJulius Group, a firm specializing in giving companies a superior competitive advantage by helping them differentiate on
delivering an experience and making price irrelevant. Reach him at [email protected].
