Service is defined as conducting an action for value creation for the benefit of someone else. As service becomes a crucial part of life for people, it is important to not only have good service in place but also understand that customers expect excellent service.
Uplifting Service has featured an article about building a culture of service excellence. Written by Ron Kaufman, the article pinpoints how a culture of excellence can be created.
Service culture is built by ensuring that all employees are recruited, promoted, and motivated to deliver high-quality service; creating engaged customers who experience a fulfilling service is the goal. When such a culture is extant, customer loyalty is engendered. Loyal customers who continue doing business with you and recommending your organization to friends and family (which creates new customers for you) means business growth and a rise in profits.
Building and maintaining a service of excellence involves employees, suppliers, and stakeholders working cohesively to find new ways to serve each other. It is a continuous cyclic process of building an ever-growing partnership of service value that benefits everyone.
So, what are the aspects of fostering service culture excellence?
- Define what service looks like for your customers by designing the language, knowledge, behaviors, and action and fit them all together by adhering to a plan.
- Disseminate service education where established principles ascertain that service people and service processes are in syncing motion.
- Create walls and internal systems of a service culture practice called ‘The 12 Building Blocks’.
- Support and encourage your organization’s service providers and nurture organic service improvement.
- Have an active and engaging leadership team to spearhead role-modeling service and protect your organization’s key assets – the people who make service excellence happen.
Managers and leaders responsible for serving external and internal customers as well as novice or experienced middle managers working in service-based organizations should consider upping their game at fostering service culture excellence. eCornell’s Leading a Culture of Service Excellence program will help you fuse the various components of service culture and create an ongoing service culture excellence that avoids hitting a plateau.
eCornell courses are approved by SkillsFuture Singapore for SkillsFuture Credit as well as by HRDF Malaysia under its SBL Scheme.