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Your organization’s service culture will make or break your reputation in your industry. But how do you go about building a strong service culture?
I compare it to the architecture of a building. Every building has a foundation, a roof, and a collection of “building blocks” that enable it to function properly. And to actually build this structure, you need a good plan.
The same holds true for the service culture of your organization. If your service culture lacks a strong foundation or if the roof leaks or if key building blocks are missing altogether… the entire thing will come falling down.
And just as importantly, one weak element affects the entire structure. Without exception, the organizations that achieve long-term service success, improved brand reputation, and rising financial performance are those that build and maintain a sturdy service architecture.
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Below is an Autogenerated Transcript
How is it possible to create a service culture? Yeah, that’s a terrific question. You know that in the book there’s a fundamental architecture that has three major components. So, imagine we’re building a house, the foundation of the house is that you’re going to need to teach the people in your organization about certain fundamental tools that can be used for continuous service improvement. And the reason you’re going to have to teach it to them is it’s not being taught in school. We have students who are graduating, having passed a lot of tests, but they can’t answer the question, What does it mean to have a customer? How do you create value for someone? How do you identify what different people value at different times? How do you produce a positive impression during a service transaction? So, we need to bring people a tool set and then have them learn how to use it and develop a skill set so that they can apply those tools, whether it’s to internal service or to external service. That’s what I would call the foundation of the house, and I call that actionable service education. The roof of the house is having a leadership team that provide direction and protection for everyone that’s going to work inside that organization. Everybody who comes to work inside the house every day, standing on the foundation of their education experience and their ability to serve well. So that leadership team has got to guide. They’ve got to role model, they’ve got to support, they’ve got to engage, they’ve got to measure, they’ve got to, etc., etc.. How many leaks do you need in a roof of a house to mess up the house? Not too many. Exactly. It doesn’t even have to be a big leak. And so, the second most critical component for building a strong service culture is make sure your leadership team is aligned and engaged and committed. Now, in between the foundation and the roof, are these building blocks. In a real house, Building blocks are things like cement, steel, wood, tiles, pipes, windows and wires. But it’s the way you put them together that actually creates a house or an office or a restaurant or a hotel or a hospital. So, in an organization, those building blocks and there are 12 of them. And for those who are listening, if you go to the book Uplifting Service, you can find the 12 chapters, one about each building block. And there are things like, are you recruiting the right people? Is the onboarding experience of the new people one that actually introduces them to the culture and harnesses them right away in a way where they help to make your culture stronger? Because they are, if you will, fresh blood. Too many organizations, bring people in and say, “Well, why don’t you just work here for six months and figure out how things work and then we’ll get you involved?” That’s not a good approach. So, that’s two of the building blocks, but there are many more. Communications recognition, voice of customer measures and metrics, improvement process, Service recovery, benchmarking service and others. So those are the three major components. A foundation, Leadership, building blocks. And then you need to have an implementation roadmap because you cannot do everything all at once. And those roadmaps must be designed in a in a customized manner, taking into account the situation for any complex organization. So that we can help them do an assessment of where to start, what should you hold off on and what can you leave for later?