Implementing service excellence in business

There are two key questions that need to be answered for anyone wanting to do well in business: First, knowing what customers expect and second, finding ways to satisfy those expectations. Companies who adapt best to changing market dynamics while trying to find the right answers to these questions win the market and win over competition.

What is it that customers want? Customers know what they want and are not afraid to ask for it. They are becoming increasingly confident and assertive in their service requirements. It is just a matter of getting to know your customers better. Speaking to them, asking the right questions, and keeping their interests at heart. Not cliché statements but living ‘moments of truth’. Customers expect consistency of service every time and count on timely execution. Customers expect nothing less than what companies promise, even though they may be surprised with better. Anything less than delivering what customers want damages or destroys credibility.

The focus then turns on how to deliver customer requirements in the best possible way, effectively and efficiently; that is, ‘service excellence’. A hot topic which tries to address the business sentiment for service delivery which exceeds customers’ expectations and which indirectly implies exceeding the company’s call of duty.

In today’s global world environment, it is becoming even more difficult to differentiate in a crowded competitive marketplace and as a result, company profitability is positively associated with customer satisfaction and customer retention. It stands to reason then, that value, and market differentiation, is often delivered through service excellence.

Yet still, delivering service excellence is not easy to achieve and many companies do tend to falter. Implementing service excellence requires strong company leadership and values. Successful engrained values and leadership are the fundamentals as they create passion for customers. The company must also be able to get its internal operations right. It is useless overpromising and then not delivering.

Any company needs to have effective service delivery processes so that it will be a company which is easy to do business with. A company is also as good as its people and thus, people engagement is a must for service excellence delivery throughout all customer touch points. Ultimately, the company needs to be agile to anticipate change in market requirements.

A company must promise reliability to deliver on its promises consistently and accurately. It must be responsive to customer complaints by providing prompt, willing and helpful service. The customer needs to be assured of the company’s ability to deliver. The courtesy and competence of employees comes into play here. The company must also place itself in the customer’s shoes and understand the service from the end user’s perspective. It must show empathy. Personnel facing, communication materials and equipment used are all tangibles that result out of good service.

A company must ultimately know that mistakes will always happen. Accidents will occur and complaints will arise. Knowing how to deal with them and with customer dissatisfaction is also very critical. Dealing effectively with customer dissatisfaction can bring about a better interpersonal relationship with your customer than if the customer was satisfied in the first place. These situations help create an emotional bond with the customer.

While trying to design the perfect system in terms of processes and procedures, there must be some form of flexibility for problem solving needs. Not dealing with problems effectively will create what is called a ‘service quality gap’ between what the customer expects and what the company is able to deliver.

Ultimately, this is what quality is all about. Although there may be different definitions and interpretations to quality, the one which holds best, is that ‘quality management’ provides consistent conformance to customers’ expectations. This is because it includes both the idea of quality as a specification (what the product or service can do) and the idea of quality as conformance (there are no errors, so it always does what it is supposed to do).

Managing quality means ensuring wide-spread understanding of its importance and how it can be improved throughout the business. Quality applies to all the business units and affects every person within the organisation. Every process must work properly and in conjunction with one another, since every process affects and in turn is affected by others.

Every part of the organisation is both an internal customer and, at the same time, an internal supplier for other parts of the organisation. This means that errors in the service provided within an organisation will eventually affect the product or service that reaches the external customer. So, one of the best ways of satisfying external customers, is to satisfy internal customers.

A total approach to quality should include every individual in the business. People are both the source of good and bad quality and it is everyone’s personal responsibility to get quality right.

This applies not only to those people who deal with customers but also to team members who provide back office support. Staff should be encouraged to exceed expectations and covering the ‘extra mile’ should not go unnoticed. Most importantly companies should set an example for their staff by going the extra mile themselves and make time to receive regular customer feedback for continuous improvement.

Irrespective of what industry the company works in, at the end of the day every company is operating in a service business. Products are dormant without a service. Good service sustains any business. So it is pretty obvious that companies always have to go above and beyond their call of duty to give people more than they expect. The formula is simple: If companies don’t give good service, they won’t have a business.

Companies are there to make profits out of satisfying customers and in this day and age companies can never ever come close to the idea of saying “sorry that’s not on my plate”. Going beyond what’s expected, almost beyond the plain practical, is what a service is all about. In this world we are living in, where everything seems to be service oriented, each and every company has to understand that providing the best possible service is fundamental.

The author is the business development manager of Vodafone Malta.