Customer Service Skills Knowledge Base and Frequently Asked Questions
Is celebrating and communicating customer service triumphs important?
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How do you convey to employees that going the extra mile to provide great customer service is both valued and expected by the company, and its managers? After all that's a critical part of creating a customer service culture -- communicating expectations and what is valued.
One way is to celebrate, and recognize employee accomplishments when they go above and beyond the call of duty to deliver exceptional customer service. By making a "big deal" about these events, and communicating (talking about them), management sends the message that "this is what we value". Over time, employees begin to understand what is valued and important, and start to internalize those values.
That's a major point related to customer service culture. That employees internalize the principles and values tied to customer service, so that eventually, they "automatically" do what is required to provide great customer service.
It's management's responsibility to identify these successes and point them out. Practically speaking it might mean congratulating Mary on successfully defusing an angry customer, or pointing out what John did to resolve a difficult customer service failure. It's an essential building block for building customer service excellence.
What might it look like? Here's a brief quote from Peggy Morrow:
Institute celebrations, recognition ceremonies, logos, and symbols of the customer service culture and its values. This is where you want the mugs, buttons, and banners. Have a customer service bulletin board to feature service incidents that were special. Seize every opportunity to publicize the times when employees do it right.
A newsletter should be developed to boast of customer service successes so that the idea of service is constantly in front of everyone. One company, a major utility, devoted an entire issue of the company magazine to "24 Karat Customer Service." It featured examples of how individual employees defined customer service, stories of humorous or unusual customer service situations, an article on the importance of internal customer service, and other ideas designed to keep employees aware of the importance of their efforts in achieving quality customer service.
Robert Bacal is the author of two books on customer service: Perfect Phrases for Customer Service: Hundreds of Tools, Techniques, and Scripts for Handling Any Situation, and Defusing Hostile Customers Workbook. Most of the questions and answers in the Customer Service Knowledgebase (which you are reading now) is based on the material in these books.