When thinking about improving your company’s service culture, it’s also a good idea to take a look at your overarching company culture.
Do you know what your company culture is like? Is it defined?
Company culture can evolve over a long time, through the actions of its founding members and the people they hire. If there is not a concerted effort to develop a company’s culture at its outset, it will be naturally and unconsciously formed over time.
This is why a lot of business owners and managers can find themselves looking around at a company culture they don’t remember creating, and thinking: how did we get here?
As a service provider, it’s your responsibility to maintain a create for our customers within your company. But equally important is your company culture.
If you’ve found yourself in a position where you are thinking it’s time to change your company culture, but don’t know where to start, I’ve compiled a list here of thirteen questions to ask yourself before you initiate a culture change program.
Make sure to write down the answers to these questions on a sheet of paper or your computer, so you can refer back to them if you feel you’re losing track.
If you’re not sure where you are now, how can you know where you’re going?
Thirteen questions to consider before you start a company or service culture change.
1. Why do we want to initiate this change? What is spurring it? What do we want that we are currently lacking? What do we have now that we definitely want to change?
2. How will we know when we’ve succeeded? What will the company look like—what will we see and hear, specifically, that we are not seeing and hearing today? What will we no longer see and hear, that is present now?
3. How will we track our progress, which systems will we set in place to measure our results?
4. What is the business value of this change? What strategic advantage do we seek to achieve? What is the intended financial impact of this change?
5. What value will this culture change create for our customers? How will our customers notice and experience this change? How will they communicate their experiences?
6. What value will this culture change create for our team members? How will our employees and partners notice and experience this change? How will they communicate their experiences?
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7. What is the risk of not making this change? If we continued with our current culture, what would be the consequence?
8. What about our leadership team? As they are the ones who will be implementing this change, how committed are they to it? How do we assess this commitment? If the team is not fully committed now, what do we need to do to make it happen?
9. What is our time frame for implementing this culture change project? What’s the deadline? When do we evaluate? Are these goals realistic?
10. What is our roadmap for implementation?
11. What are our internal resources and support for this project? Are they sufficient to achieve our intended goals and results?
12. What external resources will we need to pull in for this project? Are we clear on our intentions around including external resources? What investment will be involved? And how will we measure the value we receive, against this cost?
13. What other organizations similar to ours have succeeded in such culture change projects? What can we learn from studying them?
Once you address these questions and write down and address your answers, you will have a better idea of the roadmap you need to draw to achieve the culture change you are desiring for your company.
In turn, your service culture will improve too, as everyone adapts to new mindsets and processes.
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