Key Note at Brew City HDI Technology Fair

1. IN PURSUIT OF CUSTOMER
SERVICE EXCELLENCE
ROY ATKINSON – SENIOR WRITER / ANALYST
BREW CITY HDI - OCTOBER 20, 2011

2. About HDI
•Serves global community of 110,000
• 55,000 HDI Certified
• 60+ local chapters, including Brew City

3. Topics
•Customer Service Excellence –
what is it?
• Is there a framework for it?
• New media considerations

4. Customer Service Excellence
• There is a framework!
• Those same, fine folks who gave us ITIL®
http://www.customerserviceexcellence.uk.com/

5. Customer Service Excellence
Timeliness Insight
and Quality
CSE
Delivery Organizational Culture
Information and
Access

6. Customer Insight
Timeliness
and Quality
Insight
Delivery
CSE Organizational Culture
Information and
Access

7. Customer Insight
What is a customer?
• One who purchases good or services
•“A person one has to deal with”

8. Customer Insight
• How do you gain Customer Insight?
• Try to see things the way customers do
(“customer lens”)
• Gather available information
• Listen to them (OMG!)

9. Customer Insight
What do you learn from Customer Insight?
• What they need – so you can deliver it
• What they expect – so you can exceed it

10. Customer Insight
• Identify – who are your customers?
• Key word: Engage
• Learn
• Review
• Improve

11. Customer Insight
Who are your real customers?
• Internal
o IT employees (think “OLA”)
o Non-IT employees (think “SLA”)
• External
o Your company’s “public”
o Your company’s “public’s public”

12. Customer Service Excellence
Timeliness Insight
and Quality
CSE
Delivery
Organizational
Culture
Information
and Access

13. Organizational Culture
The foundation of Service Excellence is a
customer-focused organization
It’s the culture, man.

14. Organizational Culture
• Commitment to putting the customer at the
heart of service delivery
• Supported and sponsored by the
organization’s leaders
• Policies and procedures support the
customer

15. Organizational Culture
“Everything speaks”
• Be aware of customer perceptions
• Each person, each thing that’s part of a
customer interaction sends a message*
• What’s your message?
* Everything is part of the customer interaction

16. Organizational Culture

17. Organizational Culture
• Recruitment, training and development
o Customer-focused
• Staff attitudes and actions
o Polite, friendly, understanding
• Team performance
o Recognition, reward
o Linked to customer feedback

18. Organizational Culture
“Roy’s Famous”
Four Elements of Customer Service Attitude
Listening – Hear what they say
Empathy – Understand what they say
Clarity – They understand you
Consistency – They hear the same thing
no matter who they talk to

19. Customer Service Excellence
Timeliness and Insight
Quality
CSE
Organizational
Delivery
Culture
Information and
Access

20. Information and Access
• Information about services is available
(Service Catalog)
• Clear contact information
• Up-front statement of any charges or
requirements
• Use a variety of channels
• Allow flexible responses and input

21. Information and Access
According to the 2011 HDI Support Center
Practices and Salary Report…
More than half of support centers are
now using social media in the course of
providing support.

22. Information and Access
… but only a tiny percentage are actually
using social media as a channel.
Somewhere between 3 and 6% are using
it to create tickets…
Most use it only to “push” info out.

23. Information and Access
• Allow customers as much access as you can
• Consider having them contribute to
knowledge and solutions as subject matter
experts

24. Delivery
Timeliness Insight
and Quality
CSE
Delivery Organizational
Culture
Information
and Access

25. Delivery
• Make agreements with your customers
about what they can expect (SLA)
• Deliver according to targets that you
have set (metrics)
• Develop and learn from best practices
identified within and outside

26. Delivery
• Say what you’ll do
• Do what you say
• Admit mistakes
• Continually improve

27. Timeliness and Quality
Timeliness and Quality Insight
CSE
Organizational
Delivery
Culture
Information
and Access

28. Timeliness and Quality
•Handle dips in performance swiftly and
openly with your customers
•Have a clear, easy-to-use feedback /
complaint system
• Monitor quality
•Learn from your complaints – they give
you more customer insight

29. Timeliness and Quality
• Set measurable standards for response
across access channels
• Inform your customers about your
standards – and meet or exceed them
• Share what you learn across the
organization – cut down customer need to
contact you

30. Timeliness and Quality
• You cannot measure and manage
everything – select the key info
• Don’t gather data because you can –
gather the data you should
• Use the information you obtain to drive
improvement

31. Timeliness and Quality
Act on customer feedback.

32. Customer Service Excellence
• Define your “true customer”
•Insight
•Culture
• Create a language of service
Insight / Culture / Information and Access /
Delivery / Timeliness and Quality
• Simplify the customer experience
• Learn, share, improve
• Variety of channels

33. Customer Service Excellence
Excellent service is rare because it takes
real commitment to make excellence
“business as usual.”
- Unleashing Excellence

34. Customer Service Excellence
Timeliness Insight
and Quality
Delivery Organizational Culture
Information and
Access