Employees are given customer service standards to follow in order to ensure that the level of service provided to all customers meets or exceeds their expectations. Standards are based on observable behaviors that can be used to assess individual performance.
Service standards are a method for ensuring consistent levels of existing customer service and improving the customer experience. However, this method is frequently disappointing, if not downright harmful. Why?
Performance and process standards are useful for ensuring compliance and providing short-term training, but they do not provide the understanding or appetite for long-term customer experience changes.
Standardization may assure adherence to specific protocols, but it will not direct service providers’ curiosity or attention to what clients may truly appreciate. As systems and technology advance, process standards can soon become obsolete, and are thus frequently overlooked or ignored.
In certain circumstances, process standards can actually degrade the customer experience by forcing employees to give a generic baseline experience while missing unique chances to please specific clients. The root of the problem is a failure to recognize that there are two types of service standards, each with its own purpose and value: process and experience standards. Companies frequently misunderstand the two, or fail to build one or the other, rather than utilizing each type distinctively.
What are the differences between these two types of service standards? What’s the greatest way to make the most of each type and what’s the proper usage?
Service process standards
These standards can be defined and implemented at the transaction level by identifying key transactions along the customer experience and setting particular performance goals for teams or systems. These standards are written in a “do this” format and can be found in checklists, scripts, or metrics that ensure a consistent service process and result. Here are some basic examples:
- Within three rings, pick up the phone.
- Each consumer should be greeted by their first name.
- Response time within 60 minutes, respond to every client inquiry.
- If there are more than three customers in line, take it one at a time.
- Ensure the customer that it is safe and effective
- Within four hours, solve a client’s problem.
- Within 24 hours, follow up on each complaint resolution.
- Before they leave, have each client complete a feedback survey.
These service process standards can be beneficial for:
- Establishing a clear understanding of required transaction performance like sending money so that employees know what to do.
- Ensure that service delivery is consistent across all employees and locations.
- Customers will benefit from increased efficiency and safety.
- New employees are being trained to be part of a financial markets
- Coaching and reprimanding employees on a regular basis.
However, there are several drawbacks to employing service process standards. Consider the following scenario:
- If process standards aren’t evaluated and modified, they risk becoming obsolete and failing to meet minimal customer service expectations.
- Instead than thinking about ways to exceed expectations or respond in unique situations, process standards can become focused on ensuring compliance with internal pre-defined stages. It has become normal for team members to “check off the boxes” but still have an unsatisfied or angry consumer.
- Reports and analytics might direct attention away from desires to delight or wow external customers and toward fulfilling internal work targets.
Standards of customer experience
Service standards for customer experience transcend single transactions and focus on the total customer experience. These standards are more recommended in nature, evoking the wonderful feelings we all get when our customers are well-served.
Customer experience and performance standards motivate employees to think outside the box and create distinctive, engaging, and even spectacular experiences for customers. Focusing on customer service standards may motivate, inspire, and empower team members to “Unleash the impossible!”
Customer experience standards can also be used to influence staff behavior in unexpected scenarios. It’s probable that process standards won’t exist for every client situation, choice, or request. Clear customer experience standards so free and encourage employees to operate on their own best abilities, intuition, and talents specifically for OTC trading or counter OTC.
When defining experience standards, put yourself in the shoes of your customers and ask, “What do we want it to look like, or feel like, when our customers are truly supported, encouraged, appreciated, acknowledged, “wowed,” or “blown away?” The following are some examples of customer experience standards:
- We treat each customer as if they were a visitor in their own home; we treat each patient as if she were our own mother, we value every moment; we give each customer the time they need to address problems.
- Each customer considers themselves to be the most important.
- Any member of our staff can assist our clients with any question.
- Customers leave every engagement with a smile on their face.
To engage employees and delight customers, combine process and experience standards
The ideal strategy for creating predictable process performance and great customer experience is to use both types of service standards. The emotional response we want our customers to have is defined by experience standards. Internal “how- to’s” that lead to this experience in specific scenarios are known as process standards.
It is critical to initially identify your client experience standards. Involve teams that work closely with customers in these discussions. After service experience standards have been agreed upon and communicated, specific process standards can be developed to achieve that experience in your most significant customer engagements.
Customer Service’s Importance
We’ve learned to expect good customer service as customers, and if we don’t get it, we can go down the street or, even easier, go online or over the counter to find a remittance center to be exact with this kind of customer service being provided. Not only wants our business but is ready to earn it in the long run of creating a healthy business.
This isn’t to say that clients should walk all over you, but it does indicate that you should do all in your power to encourage them to do money transfer service with you. We must occasionally evaluate our policies to determine their purpose, whether they are required, and whether there are ways to make doing business with us easier for consumers. Take a few moments to think about your own company to picture out the real future the business has. Especially, when you are catering to 200 countries internationally.
Closing Thoughts
As you can see, there are two approaches to apply Customer Service Standards in your organization. Which is more important to you: your company’s transparency or its efficiency? As a benchmark, you might choose to create transparency and efficiency criteria for your organization. At the end of the day, you’d have to make sure that your standards are in line with your business goals.
Even if your customer ratings are positive, there’s no such thing as over delivering when it comes to customer service; there’s always room for improvement.
You should strive to improve your customer service standards on a regular basis with customer expectation changes. Through meaningful recommendations, great customer service may help you create trust, enhance brand awareness, gain customer loyalty, grow sales, and attract new consumers. It is more crucial than everything else for your business like money remittance and health care to keep your customer satisfaction. Ensure that your customers are completely satisfied both offline and online.
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