Improving the service we receive
Featured in the Excellent Customer Service training manual
By Susan Iacovou & Caroline Clemie
Category: Customer Service
Credit price: 4 download credits (Single user)
Teams don’t work in a vacuum; they provide services or products to customers, and need inputs from other individuals, teams or organisations (their providers) if they are to deliver these services or products effectively. ‘Who are our customers?’, explores the relationship between the team and their customers and providers, and demonstrates how this relationship can be recorded in a customer service chain. This training activity looks at the importance of strong links between the team and their providers. In particular, it recognises that strong links come from having a clear understanding of what is needed from providers and a two-way process of communication with them to ensure these needs are met.
You introduce the training activity by talking to the team about customer service chains and the performance of maintaining strong links with their providers. You explain that this training activity focuses on defining the team’s providers and improving the service they service from those providers. If the team have not completed, ‘Who are our customers?’, they do an exercise on provider mapping, where they look at the outputs they produce as a team and identify the providers who give them information, products or services that assist in their production. If the team have completed, ‘Who are our customers?’, they will look at the customer service chains they specified and record the outputs they produced. The team next consider input improvement charts through a sample chart to illustrate their use, and look at ways in which the service they are given by their providers could be improved. The team then work on input improvement charts for each of their providers. The time during which they will complete this work is agreed. You check their progress and support them during this period. When the team reconvene, they compile an action plan, which will produce the improvements outlined on the input improvement charts. The training activity concludes with an outline of the key learning points.
Who is it for: This training resource is intended for use by trainers to enable participants to learn how to identify and improve the products and services they receive from their providers.
| Resource Type: | Activity |
| Min Group Size: | 4 |
| Max Group Size: | 20 |
| Typical Duration: | 03:55:00 |
| No of Pages: | 24 |
Resources: View standard resources for Fenman training activities
Purpose: This training resource is intended for use by trainers following, ‘Who are our customers?’, as part of the process of introducing a customer service culture in the teams. The training activity can also be used on its own with a team wanting to improve the service they get from their providers.
Download the training activity, Improving the service we receive as featured in the Fenman training manual; Excellent Customer Service