Writing customer service standards
Featured in the Excellent Customer Service training manual
By Susan Iacovou & Caroline Clemie
Category: Customer Service
Credit price: 4 download credits (Single user)
Good customer service is essentially the ability to at least meet, and at best exceed, your customer’s expectations. What many teams don’t realise is that they can to some extent control the expectations of their customer by telling them what they can expect from the people in the team and the processes the team follow. The best way to communicate this is through the development of service standards, which form the basis of the service levels offered to your customers. In this training activity, team members look at the two main dimensions of quality service, people and processes, and work on defining customer service standards for their team in each of these areas.
You introduce the session by outlining the definition of customer service standards and explaining why such standards are important. The team then look at the first component of quality customer service, people, and learn about five key areas where customer service standards can be set. These areas are illustrated by an example. They then consider the second component of quality customer service, processes, and discuss five key process areas in which customer service standards can be set. Once again, these areas are illustrated by taking the team through an example. Next, they look at the need for customer service standards to be Specific, Measurable, Agreed or Accepted, Realistic and Time bound (SMART). The team review some of the standards described in the examples and assess how well they meet these requirements. The team then spend time setting their own customer service standards in the five people and five process areas. They discuss their conclusions with you and finalise a set of customer service standards for implementation. You conclude by telling the team that ‘Implementing customer service standards’ will review ways of implementing the customer service standards they have defined.
Who is it for: This training resource is intended for use by trainers to enable participants to define appropriate customer service areas and write clear, concise and realistic customer service standards.
- Themes:
- Planning,
- Quality,
- Questioning,
| Resource Type: | Activity |
| Min Group Size: | 4 |
| Max Group Size: | 20 |
| Typical Duration: | 02:40:00 |
| No of Pages: | 27 |
Resources: View standard resources for Fenman training activities
Purpose: This training resource is intended for use by trainers as a part of the development of a customer service culture. Teams who have completed, ‘Best practice benchmarking’, will be able to call upon their knowledge of practices in their organisations when developing their own customer service standards. The training activity can also be used as part of a project to raise customer satisfaction levels. It has strong links with, ‘Implementing customer service standards’, in which the team learn how to implement customer service standards through a customer service action plan.
Download the training activity, Writing customer service standards as featured in the Fenman training manual; Excellent Customer Service