Customers are everything. If you don’t have customers you don’t have a business. It doesn’t matter how good your product is.
Every half savvy business person upwards knows this. Few people would argue against it.
Customer service is about the “experience”, how people feel about you, your staff and how you go about delivering what you provide. Its actually a very simple model.
The challenge we seem to face these days is in deliveirng the level of servcie we want as often as we can. Some peopke are great at it and training them seems a waste of time because they have it down so well. For others training also seems a waste of time because no matter how much you train they are never going to get it. And then we have those in between.
I was talking to a friend the other day who has built a remarkable business. I can’t reveal what it is but he likens it to a hotel, even though you could argue it couldn’t be further from a hotel. But a remarkable business it is.
He now only has one problem: sustainability.
How does he get the process to be replicated to ensure his success is assured?
One way is through process. It will take a bit of work (but doesn’t all success come through hard work?) but if he is able to simplify and process map everything his business does he should be able to increase the chances of repetition of good quality systems. Staff will knwo what to do, they will have a flowchart of how to do it and when to do it and, with a large degree of certainty he could devise levels of authority for people to act within.
So far so good.
Only one problem, he hasn’t built the business this way. Sure there are processes and procedures already laid down but it is a fairly loose understanding and it has more evolved than been structured.
Why is this a problem? Well people don’t like change and any attempt, no matter how well intentioned to structure or manage people’s behaviour it will be met with some level of resistance. So if you are going to decide to buold some processes into your business, you will need to manage the change process and acknowledge people’s (possibly negative) feelings towards it.
What you do want is the same culture that you built your success on.
So let’s look at culture.
There are many and varied depths we can go into on this but for a small to medium enterprise the best way to define culture is the “mood” or “environment” at work. It’s the manner in how things get done. Process and procedure is the function. Culture is the “organism”.
The key difference? You feed an organism. You don’t let it grow on its own.
So what we do to sustain success is to feed the culture you want and allow the processes and procedures to back that up.
It’s a fine balance and it’s a bit like an autopilot. Occasionally you will go slightly off track but you need to take action to “right the ship” when that happens.
Here’s the key that so may people miss, and trust me, I’ve missed this a few times but I always come back to the following:
The key to organisational success in Culture AND Process.
It is NOT an either/or proposition.
Look at our business and answer the following questions:
- what IS our culture? what are we “like” (hotel?)
- what do I want us to be like? (gap?)
- how well do we know our processes?
- is our progress “conscious” or “evolving”
- who do I need to bring with me?
For consistent and successful customer service everyone needs to know what (process) to do.
Everyone also needs to know how (culture) to do it.
