Service Culture

14 questions to ask when building a service culture

By 2010-11-10 June 20th, 2017 3 Comments
  1. Is our leadership team in agreement on key business goals and priorities? Do they understand the importance of a strong service culture to achieve these goals?
  2. Do our service training programs teach the same fundamental principles to the entire organization? Are these principles being applied to create measurable value for our customers?
  3. Does our organization share a common language from top to bottom and across departments when talking about service? Do we use this same language to talk about external service to customers and internal service to colleagues?
  4. Do all our employees and partners clearly understand our service vision and act to make it real every day?
  5. Are our recruitment processes aligned with our service vision and values? Are we hiring people who make our vision and values stronger?
  6. Do our orientation programs describe the service culture of our organization and help newly hired staff understand how they can contribute to make it stronger?
  7. Do our communications to employees regularly feature service issues and achievements? Do we include “voice of the customer” comments in our communications?
  8. Do we recognize and reward superior external service to customers and internal service to colleagues?
  9. How do we capture “the voice of our customer”? Do we share it widely throughout our organization?
  10. Are our current measures aligned with our service vision as well as business priorities?
  11. Does our service improvement process seek new ideas from every employee?
  12. When service breakdowns occur, do we focus on bouncing back to increasing customer loyalty?
  13. Do we benchmark our service performance with companies inside and outside our industry?
  14. Are our leaders and managers excellent role models of service? Are they aware of the essential role they play in building a superior service culture?

3 Comments

  • danny wong says:
    2010-11-13 at 8:23 am

    I am always interested in your service program and this blog is useful to me. I look forward to receiving more of such articles.

  • 240311Sabah says:
    2011-03-24 at 12:17 am

    According to my experience, the answer to all these 14 questions as applied in our daily family and office life is all a big “NO”. There is no service culture aside from the mere culture of ‘survival’. Just so that we do not lose sight of our senses, we try to please all and end up not pleasing anyone at all. Guess what, and strangely so, life goes on. There is plenty of awareness that something has to be done to improve the service culture, but to understand each one’s role and carry it out accordingly is no where near in sight. Just waiting for the Boss to say the word, “Forward March”, “Halt”, “At Ease”; coz if you move ahead of the crowd, people are bound to stare and whisper: “how cocky!” Of course we all endeavour to contribute our best, even work till the wee hours of the morning, does anyone care? I keep wandering.

  • Shahid says:
    2012-01-28 at 1:21 pm

    Thank you Ron for being helpful.

    I am one of the beneficiaries of your valuable input and material on Service. No doubt you are ‘the best’ in customers service related matters. I am one of your admirers from the day I attended one of your programs in Lahore Pakistan.

    Best wishes and regards.

    Shahid Nafees