Setting service standards is an approach commonly used to create consistent levels of service performance and enhance customer experience. Yet this practice is often disappointing, and at times even counter-productive. Why?
Performance and process standards can be useful for compliance and short-term training, but they do not generate the understanding or appetite for long-term improvements in customer experience.
Facts About Standard Service
Rigorous use of standards may ensure adherence to precise processes, but will ignore what customers really value. Process standards can also quickly become outdated as systems and technology evolve, and are thus often merely tolerated, or ignored.
In some cases, process standards can make the customer experience worse, by driving staff to robotically deliver a uniform baseline experience while ignoring unique opportunities to delight individual customers.
The core problem lies in not recognizing that there are two types of service standards, each with their own purpose and value. Rather than leveraging each type uniquely, companies often confuse the two, or fail to create one or the other. The good thing is that, if you want to know more about providing standard service, you can check web hosting offshore
Types of Standard Service
Standards of service process: These standards can be created and deployed at a transactional level by identifying vital transactions on the customer journey and creating specific expectations for team or system performance. These standards have a “do this” format and may be clearly expressed in checklists, scripts or metrics that ensure consistent service process and performance.
Standards of customer experience: Customer experience service standards transcend specific transactions and focus attention on the overall customer experience. These standards are more inspirational by nature and call forth the positive emotions we all experience when our customers are being well-served. It also provokes staff members to look beyond routines and find ways to create unique, delightful, and even extraordinary experiences. Focusing on standards for positive customer experience can encourage, enable, and empower team members to “Unleash the Unbelievable!”