Uplifting Service - Blog

How do you know if your service improvement efforts are really working? How can you be sure your service culture development program will achieve the ultimate financial objectives of your business? The Uplifting Service “Measures […]

Businesses and communities for years have developed countless theories and ‘best practices’ to either Get Employees Who Care (Service Recruitment – Building Block #3) or to Get Employees To Care (Rewards and Recognition – Building Block #5)

Increasingly, compensations and appraisals are now being tied to % improvements in service indexes.

Here’s the problem:

Employees don’t live in the world of index improvements. Many may not even understand it.

In a competitive global market where products are commoditized and speed of delivery easily matched, quality service is a key differentiator in every industry – including engineering, manufacturing, production, logistics, IT, and more.

Who plays the most powerful role in a successful education implementation? The employees who are learning, the trainer who leads the class, or the manager of the employees?

Over 20 years ago two notable authors – John Newstrom and Mary Broad — published research that is still relevant today. Transfer Of Training: Action-packed Strategies To Ensure High Payoff From Training Investment

For leaders seeking to achieve large-scale service improvement with a powerful education program, this research is critical.

The “Smarter Services Executive Symposium” in Boston was a deep dive into the world of services, service providers, and field service engineers. The depth of sharing was impressive, as was the depth of expertise.

I gave one keynote presentation and took fourteen pages of notes. Here are my “top twelve take-aways” from the event. Which one is most relevant for you?

How do you turn a passion for “shining service” into measurable, visible, and audible performance standards? How do you translate a vision like “We Make Each Moment Matter” and a purpose like “Helping People Celebrate Life” and turn them into observable, and trainable, commitments?

LUX* Resorts has cracked the code with their newest version of LUX* Shining Personality Standards. Every standard (except the one that specifically cites the Vision and Purpose) is observable – can be clearly seen or heard – and therefore easily taught, coached, managed, maintained, and celebrated.

One of my clients launched a vigorous service improvement program to create greater value for external customers. Hundreds of classes were conducted for thousands of Service Champions around the world. The business objectives were clear: reclaim market share and rebuild a slipping reputation. Bounce back in recovery situations. Focus on external customer experience, not internal political issues. Demonstrate passion for existing customers. Go all-out to win new business.

But something unusual happened as the program rollout expanded. Rather than focusing on these identified external business targets, earning high internal course evaluations became the course leaders’ primary focus. Being rated highly as a very engaging course leader was viewed as great success. Scoring 9 out of 10 for leading a wonderful class became a cause for celebration. That’s a great score, but a very different bull’s-eye.

Customer success and better business results are why the program was originally conceived. High course leader scores are not the same as valuable business impact. Eventually this lack of alignment
became painfully apparent—the focus had drifted away from the early goals, and the entire program needed to refocus. Don’t let this drifting happen to you.

Learn how to increase the impact of your investment…

Service Measures and Metrics are a valuable building block for service improvement. But to build a service culture, the methodology of these metrics must be uplifting for those you query and for the members of your team.

Clarify What You Are Measuring and Why

Just because you can measure many things doesn’t mean that it makes good sense to track them all. What do you really want to know, and what action will you take with what you learn? Review this list and then decide which insights will be most helpful to improve your service now.

Three years ago, Ingrid Lindberg arrived at global health insurance giant Cigna and spearheaded an effort to help the company become truly customer focused. As the chief customer experience officer, Lindberg came into an environment that was certainly competent and caring. In fact, 10 percent of Cigna’s thirty-thousand-person workforce are clinicians—nurses, behavioral health specialists, substance abuse experts, and so on—who work to influence the well-being and health of employees (whom they call customers) in the companies they serve (what they call their clients).

How do you move beyond satisfaction? How do you stop looking backward to evaluate performance, and instead look forward to create new possibilities and potential? By changing your mind-set-and transforming your survey-to a value-add proposition. Nokia Siemens Networks brought people from different departments together with a new goal-to create conversations and cultivate insights that would improve the relationships with their clients moving forward.

“Instead of asking clients how they rate our service, we asked them to explain their challenges, their goals, and the ways in which we could help them,” says Jeffrey Becksted, the company’s Head of Customer Experience and Service Excellence. “We asked them where Nokia Siemens Networks fits into their future-not how we’ve served them in the past.”