Service Excellence Assurance Programme

Introduction

A large part of customer service success is creating a seamless experience. Customer needs are anticipated; systems are in place; employees are trained. The company runs like a well-oiled machine. But what happens when the unexpected happens? Customers have an “unusual” request or they simply don’t know the rules of the system? The unexpected, I suggest, provides the opportunity to stretch the system, improve the system, or even forget the system and Wow a customer.

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Henry Ward Beecher

For companies with excellent systems in place, the next frontier in customer service is Wow, handling the unexpected creatively. We have observed that companies and professionals practicing creative customer service successfully have two things in common.

The first commonality is that they care. Management cares. Employees care. Everyone cares a great deal about people. They like to help people solve problems. In fact, not helping people would be like kicking a puppy. How much does your company care? How much do you care?

The second commonality is that employees have authority. Even when people care, if their hands are tied they can’t help. In addition, employees who aren’t especially “caring” might be motivated to be creative for customers simply because it feels good to exercise their authority. Do you have enough authority to be creative?

With all of the advances in technology, doing a good job isn’t good enough to separate from the pack. The prize will go to the one creating new frontiers. How far will you go to Wow a customer?

Soft Touch in Association with your team can provide a continuous quality improvement framework to WOW your customers using nationally and internationally accepted business excellence principles and will provide a way for your business units to assess their management systems and routinely identify opportunities for improvement in a planned way.

1 What is Service Excellence Assurance Programme?

SEAP is an innovative, multi-tiered programme to support service driven organisations in becoming more competitive, more efficient and more profitable. Never before have customers been so demanding with regard to the value they receive for the money they spend. This is paralleled by the current economic environment, in which only the fittest service driven operators will survive. SEAP offers a practical approach to achieving excellence and boosting bottom line results. The programme focuses on every aspects of the service driven organisation from customer service to communications, operations to organisational excellence. SEAP cannot be considered as a discretionary business cost, but as a necessary investment in your organisation’s future.

2 The Impact of Service Excellence Assurance Programme

SEAP will show better managed organisations with a marked increase in managerial competence, capability and effectiveness. With the introduction of new or improved processes and standards, SEAP will show significant improvements with respect to customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and bottom line organisation benefits.

In broad terms SEAP provides a platform for organisations that want to compete with the best in the world and who are serious about developing clear value propositions for all stakeholders, e.g. customers, employees, management, suppliers and partners.

Overall, customer satisfaction ratings will improve; employee satisfaction ratings will increase; employee turnover will reduce; efficiencies will increase and so will profitability.

4 How does it work?

SEAP is designed to operate on four distinct levels, each level can be implemented individually or collectively:

As a business strategy. By facilitating organisation leadership team/s to have develop a Service Excellence Strategy.
As a driver of continuous improvement. By allowing organisations to self assess their capability, using self-assessment tools, in relation to customer focussed service delivery, identifying areas and methods for improvement;
As a skills development tool. By allowing individuals and teams within the organisation to explore and acquire new skills in the area of customer focus and customer engagement, thus building their capacity for delivering improved services;
As an independent validation of achievement. By allowing organisations to seek formal accreditation to the Customer Service Excellence standard, demonstrate their competence, identify key areas for improvement and celebrate their success.

5 Main Features

SEAP seeks to create and develop a service excellence culture that is specific to your organisation.
At the core of SEAP is the belief that every single employee in the organisation can and must make a difference to the quality of the customer’s experience.
All employees in the organisation from frontline staff to senior management participate in the programme.
The Soft Touch Service Excellence programme is independently assessed on an annual basis by an experienced panel of assessors who have been approved by the Soft Touch Service Excellence Approvals Board.

6 Benefits

The Soft Touch Service Excellence Programme is designed to assist service operators to meet the ever increasing customer’ expectations, thus enabling them to deliver a world-class service experience.

Benefits to service organisations

With regards to internal processes, SEAP:

Facilitates continuous business improvement through exceptional service management principles under the guidance of a mentor;
Results in customer satisfaction tracking and thus valuable information on the strengths of the organisation in addition to areas for improvement to be addressed;
Leads to the structured development, implementation and management of customer-centred service standards and measures;
Fosters a common language and service culture where every individual in the organisation is clear about the contribution they can make to creating a memorable customer experience;
Ensures more effective communication within departments, across departments of the organisation and indeed, where is the case, across multiple sites of your service organisation;
Consequently, increases the consistency of service delivery across departments (and multiple sites);
Helps your organisation keep abreast of your customers’ needs and expectations in a changing and competitive marketplace and thus better meet and exceed them;
Engages staff, thus improves staff relationships and employee morale leading to higher productivity and lower staff turnover;
Improves your reputation as an employer and thus ensures you a higher degree of attractiveness and marketability when recruiting;
Helps address the fragmentation inherent in many service products, often composed of a core offering supported by a range of facilities and activities;
Thus identifies and strengthens weak links in the service value chain, ensuring no components detract from the core product and that all stages of the total customer experience provided on and off site are of a world class standard;
Improves operational efficiencies, yield and profitability through better business practices;
Results in higher customer satisfaction, resulting in repeat visitations and referrals, and thus in increased profitability.

Customers now have a greater capacity to research, and discern between, the wide range of service experiences available to them, with a view to finding those that best match their needs and preferences. Working with Soft Touch’s SEAP to align to global best practice the customer acquires a means for bias and a cause for greater customer confidence.

With regard to the external orientation of the organisation, SEAP:

Demonstrates your organisation’s creativeness and initiative in a competitive and changing environment;
Provides a signal to the consumer that you are committed to customer satisfaction and the highest standards of service quality, professionalism, continuous improvement and industry best practice;

Signals your commitment to best practice in service delivery to fellow competitors and organisations in the service industry;
Acknowledges your organisation and staff for devoting their time and resources to service excellence;
Affords your organisation a competitive advantage over those organisations who are not measuring their service excellence.

Benefits to Customers

Assures the customer (both internal and external) of a commitment to quality;
Signals reliability of their chosen product and service;

Gives customers the confidence to expect exceptional levels of service quality.