Customer Service Self Assessment – A Leader’s Choice

by Shilpa Asnani 15 November 2009 14:43

Businesses have long realized that sustainability with regards to customer service is crucial to their success. Reaching a desired level of service excellence has to be combined with efforts to stay at that level or even improve. For this, many firms dedicate precious human resources in order to continuously track and improve service quality levels. With the help of technology and innovative players in the field of customer service training and consultancy, new and improved products have been developed to assess a firm’s customer service capabilities.

Measuring customer satisfaction and taking steps to improve satisfaction levels suggests that the company is customer focused. Caring about customers and asking for their feedback regarding the service levels they are expecting, helps to create an impression that a change may be on the way. However, this strategy works only for the short run. In the long run, customers’ needs change and so do their expectations. Then comes a need for a systematic tracking of customer service levels. This includes measuring customer satisfaction, putting systems in place to improve satisfaction levels, and then measuring customer satisfaction levels again. Firms would then find themselves following an improvement cycle whereby at regular intervals they focus on an area which leads to improvements in customer satisfaction levels. Using an assessment tool helps to track these trends in improvement.

Using web based tools for measuring service quality levels are very common. A few generic and simple statements such as:

  • Do you thank your customers every time they transact with you?
  • Do you respond to complaints and/feedback from customers in a timely manner?
  • Do your employees have full product knowledge?

 

Questions such as these claim to be the best way of measuring the organisation’s current standing with respect to customer service. However, they represent only a one dimensional approach. In order to maintain sustainable customer service delivery a proper system is required. Major firms with complex organisational structures and several employees cannot possibly get an accurate picture of their customer service performance with a few predefined set of questions. What companies need is a detailed plan which acts as a guide as well as checklist to ensure a thorough measurement of operations in terms of customer service. One such system enables this continuous measurement and has been developed by The International Customer Service Institute. Combined with a customer service standard and self assessment tool, the standard provides a detailed list of requirements which an organisation needs to fulfill in order to receive certification. Certifying your company to a standard also serves as a marketing tool. It helps to strengthen the perception of a customer focused company in the eyes of all stakeholders.

Benefits of implementing a customer focused standard in your firm include:

1) It will help you to create a more customer focused culture in the organisation.

2) It will help you to transform your employees’ customer service knowledge, into practice.

3) It will provide you with an opportunity to benchmark yourself against the best.

4) It will enable you to receive an objective presentation of relevant data which makes it easy for comparison with all other organisations who submit their data through the online self assessment tool.

5) It would help you to identify shortfalls in the organisational structure, which may be preventing you to meet higher levels of customer service.

Assessing customer service and knowing where you stand in relation to others has benefits which far exceed the cost of implementing and setting up a system to track service quality levels in your firm. Certification shows your customers, competitors, employees and investors that you will be using best practices in order to serve them better. The process of achieving and maintaining the certification also shows your effort to ensure that you are continually improving and refining your activities.

Shilpa Asnani
Service Quality Executive
The International Customer Service Institute

Tags:

Customer Service | Customer Service Improvement

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Comments

12/18/2009 2:15:30 PM #

Ahmed Khallab

hi,Mr.Shilpa,

thnaks about this issuess , but how we can control the other deparmtent inside the organization and effect the service delivery and quality ....

Ahmed Khallab
Libyana Mobile Phone Operator
Customer Service Director

Ahmed Khallab

1/4/2010 9:05:21 AM #

Shilpa Asnani

Dear Ahmed,

Usually organisational structures are set up in a way so as to centralise the customer service function. In other words, most organisations have a single department which has the sole responsibility to handle customer complaints, queries, suggestions etc. Hence, it remains the responsibility of the Head of the Customer Service Department to manage the customer service performance.

On the other hand service delivered by the firm does not depend only on the performance of the customer service department. The quality of service the end customers receive is affected by the whole operational system of the organisation. In other words each and every employee, manager, interaction, process, policy, strategy, etc. of the organisation has an influence on the final product/service delivery. Thus, each department head would have to ensure that they are performing their respective functions to the fullest.

The initial market analysis of the marketing and sales department is essential to identify the customers’ needs and expectations; the consumer market related objectives and strategies are set by the strategy department;  the successful product development, the responsibility of the production or operation departments, is the central piece of giving the customers what they actually want; the easily accessible and safe payment methods are the core function of the financial department; while also the last stage of product/service delivery is in the hand of the sales department. Usually only in the end of this line, or let’s say behind the scenes, the customer service department is the one responsible for the satisfaction and loyalty of the customers, at the same time it has little to directly interfere in the strategy development, production or the  selling methods.

BUT in order to ensure the highest level of service (product) delivery and improve - maintain customer satisfaction and loyalty, the customer service department should act closely with the Service Quality Department or (in case there is not any) act a bit as a Service Quality Department. This department ensures that the final quality of the product and service delivered to the end customers fully meets the expectations of the customers by ensuring smooth functioning of each and every bit of the planning production, sales and service measurement (e.g. feedback collection) and improvement steps of a product lifecycle.

In order to improve or assist in improving service quality levels, Customer Service Managers  could implement Customer Service Standards.   Industry related service quality standards usually published by the local government and industry associations provide guidelines on the expected quality of delivery in the market, or generic customer service standards, e.g. The International Customer Service Standard (TICSS) developed by the Institute can give very clear guidelines on the generally “at least” expected  customer service performance.  The requirements of this standard are addressed to all departments involved in and affecting the service quality by suggesting improvements based on the current performance results. Another popular option nowadays is to hire a customer service consultancy to aid in the entire process of monitoring and improving service quality levels. Such a step would provide the firm with all the benefits of outsourcing which includes specialised advice.

But at the end of the day, it still remains the duty of the head of the customer service department to act as a “change agent” to identify areas of improvement, plan and initiate the necessary changes and  highlight the main benefits of the improvements for the top level management in order to get the necessary support to implement each step of the improvement plan throughout all the departments of the organisation.

I wish you strong commitment for quality and persistence in fulfilling the needed tasks.

Shilpa Asnani

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