It is time to move on to ‘How’ – Where the Rubber Meets the Road for Customer Service

From products and pricing to service and social, there is no shortage of talk on what companies need to do to achieve service excellence. For the past many years, specific to ‘social’ the number of people who are more than willing to share ‘what to do’ is staggering. It is easy to say what to do, to be an advice giver. That said, telling someone how to do something is not nearly as easy.

There is not only a tremendous difference between ‘what’ and ‘how’, the ability to cross the chasm between is where companies succeed or fail. Transitioning from what to do to how to do it takes hard work, planning and execution – especially in the realm of customer service!

Customer Service Mission:
A mission is the very big, long-term end-result or achievement in your sights. A Customer Service mission is the biggest and most important thing you and your team aim to accomplish. Mission statements can be tied to financial metrics, directly or indirectly, but financial metrics can also get in the way. A mission is a ‘what’ not a ‘how’. What is your customer service mission? Do you know it by heart?

(A quick sidebar regarding a mission: The company certainly needs to have a mission, but that is not the same as the customer service mission. For example, a company mission may be to reduce the need for customer service. That is not going to fit for the customer service team, now will it.)
Service Goals and Objectives:

With respect to customer service, goals and objectives are often interchangeable – just as long as you are clear. There might be a slight nuance that goals are customer facing and objectives are internally focused, but they should be very well aligned. Each is an end game towards which actions and activities are focused.  But, we are still in the land of ‘what’, not yet progressing to ‘how’; that said each should be smaller than the mission.

Customer Service Strategy:
Here is where I think organizations lose sight of their purpose. If there is not a clear mission, or set of goals (or objectives), a strategy is almost a waste of time. The idea of a strategy is to focus the team towards achieving the goals and objectives, towards the mission.  I believe too many people jump to strategy, when they mean mission. The importance of strategy, is that we finally have moved from ‘what’ to ‘how’, hallelujah!

What is a strategy?

A well thought and constructed plan of attack with actions that will be used to achieve the desired objective. The strategy is the first, most important step in the ‘how’ process.

Customer Service Tactics and Actions:
Simply stated, tactics and actions are what is done to deliver on the strategy. This is where the rubber meets the road. Although tactics and actions are more about doing (versus thinking), in customer service, poor execution of tactics and actions will have far reaching consequences; leading eventually to inability to succeed at the mission.  The inability to succeed at the customer service layer will impact the ability for the organization to achieve the higher mission as well.

The Outline

Mission = the most important thing you and your team aim to accomplish

• Goals = an end-game towards which actions and activities are focused
  • Strategy = the plan of attack
    • Actions and Tactics = the execution of the strategy

What it Might Look Like for You

Customer Service Mission: We at believe that you, the customer, are part of our family. We are dedicated to treating you with respect; being courteous towards you and creating a positive experience for you each and every time we connect. We hope to convey that we are a caring and genuine team, here to help you to the best of our ability; in-person, on the phone and across all digital channels.

• Goal 1: Increase Customer Satisfaction
  • Strategy: Improve Service Experience
    • Be responsive and courteous
    • Offer Chanel Choice
    • Remove or reduce problematic metrics (AHT, FCR)
  • Strategy: Improve Self-Service
    • Offer How-to guides
    • Increase use of Video
  • Strategy: Focus on Product In-Use Experience
    • Facilitate online community
    • Incent to contribute, engage further 1:1
    • Encourage social sharing; product
• Goal 2: Increased Loyalty and Retention
  • Strategy: Create Passionate Customers
    • Offer extra value to repeat customers
    • Train Customer Service Reps as brand advocates
    • Reward Agents with a positive experience
  • Strategy: Facilitate Organic growth
    • Encourage customers to share brand stories
    • Encourage social sharing; experience
    • Recognize Super-users
• Goal 3: Meet Customer Expectations
  • Strategy: Manage expectations
    • Publish response time service levels
    • Consistency across interaction channels
    • Hit response targets
  • Strategy: Service with a smile
    • Empower agents to make decisions
    • Rewards agents who go above and beyond
    • Remove robotic scripts

• Goal 4: Bring Social into the Process fold
  • Strategy: Operational Efficiency
    • Web-Self-service, let people help themselves (WSS is the doorway to SCS)
    • Decide on the Proper Process for Social Contacts
    • Proper Process to capture knowledge and reuse
  • Strategy: Offer Channel Choice
    • Deflection as an outcome, can be right (caution advised)
    • Understand your customers, where they want to talk to you
    • Active Pull to proper channel (Content /Value) – not push

So What?

I cheated a bit, and used the results of the research Sword Ciboodle and thinkJar did to drive the conversation. Well, maybe that is not cheating, but the results did show that organizations are focusing heavily on the Goals I listed above.  Gartner (8 Pillars of CRM) and Forrester also have been know to recommend building the Customer Service program with specific goals and objectives in mind – no, not just operational efficiency, but how the impact can be felt directly by the customers.

What are your Goals and Objectives as an customer service organization? If you are Vendor or Analyst reading this, what how do your clients articulate their Goals and Objectives? Do they have a Customer Service Mission Statement? Please, feel free to add to the list and do not beat me up too much for missing something. To give credit where credit is due, thanks to Clare Dorrian for editing help and good ideas!