Delivering Service

We all like good service – but it is often hard for an organisation
to get to grips with the requirements for defining a service as
“good”.

Anyone can sell an idea once but the key to recurring business is the
customer relationship. Keeping on your phone, answering calls and
helping although there may not be immediate profit in it, and sticking
to promises – are some of the basics that we all know make the
difference. Constant communication and realistic forecasts of what will
happen is another.

But how can we design organisations to deliver better services? Some
ideas are presented below.

The customer mind-set

The first key to building a service organisation is to create a
customer service mind-set. Many businesses tend to either focus on the
product or the pricing, and few get totally stuck in only looking at
their people. While people, product and processes are all part of the
service mix – these are only a limited set of the elements of a service
that is offered. The combination of perception, features, advantages,
benefits, emotions as well as tangible and intangible benefits all form
part of the total service package.

The service user

To really design a service properly starts with defining the service
user. It may be as simple as understanding what we call the people that
purchase from our business. Clients are classically defined as people
that tend to buy from you regularly (more by convention than by
definition) and a customer is someone that exchanges money for goods or
services. The idea is to convert customers into clients through good
service. The key to a service model is to define how a customer will
move from being a once off to a long-term buyer. This is also called
moving form a transactional to a relationship based partnership model.
Every service has a customer – but good services have lifelong
clients.

The service standard

The next step in the service definition is setting a service
standard, and ensuring that this is executed to perfection, every time.
Even poor service has its standards. If a shop is noisy and messy – you
will be surprised the day it is not, and this will shift your
expectation higher. Next time you will compare against the previous time
and if the standard is maintained – you will expect this to be the same
every-time. By setting a quality service standards it sets the
parameters for delivery it starts enabling us to predict how many of
what we need. To have a clean shop you may have to pay someone to clean
it – however if it works well, you will have more customers than when
you were a dirty shop. This cost then becomes part of the cost of the
business and needs to be recovered from the margin that is charged. Once
a standard is set it needs to be maintained and executed perfectly every
time.

Size to deliver on the standard

When a standard has been set – it implies matching resources with the
standard that needs to be delivered.

If you want to answer people’s calls within one ring and also want to
be able to handle ten calls at the same time it may be tempting to
appoint 10 customer service agents. But if the service level requires
you to respond on the 1^st ring this may require as many as 15
or 100 customer services representatives that will need to handle the
calls, depending on the volume, or through innovative structuring you
may have a first and second line of call handling that allocates some to
answering the call and others to “handling” the call. The service
parameters determine the structure of the service solution.

It is important to realise that the same people that set up a
service, is not necessarily the people that will run the service in the
long term and good service designers split these two functions. The
setup team brings everything in operation and trains up the run team,
who remains in place for the long term and perpetuates the service
standard by brining new people into it over time.

Service dimensions

To look carefully at service design it is important to consider four
dimensions.

Procedural dimension

The procedural dimension focuses on what needs to happen and
specifically address how each of the sections in a service triggers the
next.

Personal dimension

The personal dimension looks at customer intimacy and how the service
moves from being an impersonal transaction to a personal experience that
delights the end user.

Business dimension

The business dimension needs to look at costs vs benefits.

Emotional dimension

Increasingly it is recognised that while the service may be
efficient, it is also important to consider the emotional aspects of
service delivery. A flawless delivery may fail on failing to recognise
the emotional state of the customer and a great delivery may be designed
to trigger emotions within the customer.

Each of these dimensions defines service features and each of these
features has a system or process that produces them. These dimensions
also have costs and resources associated with them. So to introduce a
new feature to a service dimension requires careful planning to ensure
that it is reproducible and consistent. It is also important to consider
the interaction effects with other services in the business and the
impacts of change of all of these dimensions.

Consistency

Consistent service delivery is arguably more important that specific
features in service management. By introducing a new feature – it is
important to look at the longevity of such a feature to ensure that:

• the resources that are employed to deliver the service is
  correctly matched with delivery standards

• there is sufficient time to set customer expectations on this
  aspect of the service in order to assure return on investment

• the service feature must mature – i.e. if people like it, it
  should remain for a sufficient time to create a service
  impression

• training and other requirements for the service needs to be
  considered

It may be devastating to clients if a service description is changed
without proper change management and transitional arrangements. Removing
or substantively changing features may have the consequence of causing
major brand damage in the short term – while people adjust to changes in
the long term. Long-term services need to remain stable to have an
impact. Incremental improvements are often a lot more effective than
radical shifts, although incremental improvements may require radical
internal changes to accomplish.

Define service measures

It is important to define how the service will be measured for
quality and effectiveness.

There are several service rating scales and some of the most often
used service feature definitions include some of the dimensions
below:

Tangibles

• Appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel, and
  communication materials

Reliability

• Ability to perform the promised service dependably and
  accurately

Responsiveness

• Willingness to help customers and provide prompt service

Assurance

• Knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to convey
  trust and confidence

Empathy

• Caring, individualized attention provided to customers

Build a winning team

Service is ultimately delivered from one individual to another. The
personality of people that are in service industries and service
oriented jobs is very important. While it may be possible to build
technical skills, it is much harder to teach empathy and genuine care
for others. In building your service organisation, look for people that
care for others and that connect with providing service to others.

Conclusion

Delivering service requires individuals and teams to look carefully
at all aspects of service design. A good service design takes into
consideration the integrated picture of what the customer will
experience and optimises the delivery of the organisation to create that
experience. The key to great service is to deliver it consistently so
that it creates value for the customer and the shareholder.