I’m writing about customer service again. Why? Well, for one, I am fanatical about awesome customer service. And two, I think it is one of the best outcomes of having a great culture.

While I was ordering lunch the other day from a usual lunch place near the Nurse Next Door Heart Quarters, I noticed a sign that was posted beside the cash register. It stated:

“Because of HST (a new tax in British Columbia) customer service has become a critical issue. So:

1. Speed – You need to respond to a new customer within 20 seconds;

2. Quality – The quality of the food sold must be good;

3. Efficiency – don’t make a customer wait longer then they should

If you don’t follow this enforceable concept, it will be a reason to be fired.

Signed,

The Owner”

Don’t you just love customer service policies like this? Who thinks that you can enforce great service? Hilarious. So when I waited for 1 minute (I didn’t mind at all), I asked the girl if she was going to be fired. She rolled her eyes and said something like “nice, huh?”

What’s the lesson here? Two things. 

First, you cant “policy” your self into great customer service. In fact, you really should ban the word policy from everyones mouth if you want to be even just “OK” at customer service.

Second, even I f you don’t have an ounce of customer service DNA in your blood, just do one thing; hire the smile. If you can at least do this right, you will be better then 95% of all service providers out there.

The truth is, you can have all of the best “policies” and systems in the world to enforce good customer service, but if you don’t have the right people in place to execute on those systems and “policies” then it isn’t going to happen.

This entry was posted on October 19, 2010 at 9:40 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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