Manages Service Excellence

Activities/Tips

Map the steps in your service process and determine what can be improved.
“Walk In the Shoes:” Select someone to walk through the service process as a patient/customer. Without interfering, observe and document the process.
Examine your activities and processes for value-added effort. Ask the question, “Does this contribute to meeting our customer’s expectations?”
Personally ask your customers, “How are we doing?” Actively listen to what they say. If you have your employees do this, they will become more accountable for their customer service actions.
Either alone or with a group of employees, create a list of your perceptions of what the customers want and then ask the customers. Note the differences.
Develop a process for complaints… comment box and/or listed numbers of who they can call are two such methods. Respond personally to those complaints. Remember, dissatisfied customers tell up to 25 people about their experience.
Treat complaints as gold; these pinpoint the customer service weaknesses and where you need to spend your resources (e.g., money, people, time).
Create employee committees and solicit ideas for improving customer service.
Be a role model for Service Excellence. List the actions you will model.
Design online capabilities to provide value-added information to your customers.
Make every employee responsible for customer service. If your workgroup is measured in some way, make the employees accountable for those scores.
Evaluate each person in regards to their position and the level of customer service needed. Put the right person in the right job…don’t put an employee with attitude issues at the reception desk.
When hiring, create behavioral interviewing questions to predict how a candidate will perform their customer service responsibilities. Ask for specific, real-life examples of outstanding customer service. Once you get one, ask for another.
Consider using testing or assessments to identify strong customer service candidates. Contact Human Resources for help.
Recognize those who deliver great customer service. These people are the role models for your organization.
Set a meeting with the Service Excellence Department to get to understand the Press Ganey survey and how to use InfoEdge.
Take time to round with employees on a regular basis. Ask questions. What's working well today? Are there individuals I should recognize? Do you have tools and equipment to do your job? What can I do to help you?
Do a Service Excellence warm-up topic at all meetings. Use phrases:
- A compliment I got from a customer this week was...
- A service improvement I'm personally working on is...
- If I ran this service, an improvement I'd make for the sake of our customers are...
- A tough service situation that came up for me this week was...
- If we could hear our customers talking about us, I think we'd hear them say...
- If our customers has a magic wand to make a change in our service, I bet they would...
- When it comes to serving my customers, I wish I could get some help getting better at...
- The funniest thing that happened this week between a customer and me was...
- A great service interaction I noticed a co-worker have was when...
- A time this week when someone here made it easier for me to provide good service was when...