By Winfred Asamoah
There is hardly any company that does not have mission and/or vision statements as well as attractive tag lines and protocols aimed at serving as a constant reminder to help staff offer the best of services to valued customers. In a meeting with a reputable CEO, I recounted some specific experiences and observations I had made while waiting to see him. He was awed because what I had told him was in direct contradiction to most of the company’s protocol that had been posted for all to see. Most of their regular in-house training revolves around these protocols that are obviously not being adhered right under his supervision and yet he hardly noticed obviously uncomfortable, he asked “so what can we do to ensure that they observe these protocols”. As a matter of fact most staff adhere strictly to companies codes of ethics. But they do so only when they know “they are being watched”. They are at their very best when the managers or bosses or people know their bosses are around. Other “big men” mostly, high end clients or other business leaders, or well known politicians and their close associates also receive exceptional services. If you show up dressed in a fine suit you are also most likely to be treated very nicely. All others are very likely to receive ordinary and occasionally less than ordinary services. Some business leaders prefer to look the other way and/or convince themselves that their customers are receiving the best of services. And why not, they get feedback from close associates but such feedback will most likely be false-positive. In order words friends and close associates are most likely to tell you what you want to hear or what they know will make you happy.
My answer to the Business leader and many others is to consistently monitor, monitor and monitor and ensure that results of the exercise are immediately fed back into training and briefing. I am referring to an independent and objective process. Not everything can be measured, however when it comes to providing quality services or products and meeting or exceeding customer expectations we must know exactly how we are doing. There is a lot of evidence that by simply measuring performance, productivity and quality can improve at all levels.
Deploy mystery clients
Engaging professionals is ideal, however, any well trained person should be capable of accessing specific services just like any other client and discretely score the presence or absence of most or all implementation of service protocols that defines the company in question. Avoid engaging staff, friends or close associates. These categories of individuals would most likely warn a couple of their trusted friends, who would in turn warn their colleagues thereby compromising the effectiveness of the exercise.
One-off surveys.
Surveys are very useful in many respects but are not very effective for monitoring actual service experiences. Surveys rely on recounting past events and experiences dating several days, weeks or months. These reports would most likely be affected by recall bias. People would most likely recall extremely good or bad experiences. But the object of the process is not to just to report extreme experiences, it is to ensure consistent adherence to a certain culture or quality standards.
Operational definitions
Most service standards are clothed in fanciful adjectives. They look good on paper and in adverts but are hardly implementable because they have ambiguous connotation. Therefore actions must be clearly spelt out.
What gets measured gets done.
It is a true adage whenever you measure something; it gets performed, completed and usually improved upon. Majority of actions can and should be quantified. For instance, smiling, greeting/welcoming, maintaining eye contact, using client’s name etc can each be quantified to accurately determine the extent to which each is actually adhering to the protocol.
Not everything that counts can be counted
Qualitative techniques are more effective at providing insights and deeper understanding into some actions and outcomes of those actions. Certain key indicators may be impractical to quantify. In such cases qualitative or descriptive data can be very useful in appreciating the reasons behind those actions.
Documentation
Denial constitutes one of the biggest issues confronting reporting substandard services. Most often than not staff involved would likely deny. That is why it is absolutely necessary to document details of all encounters including dates, time, duration as we take notes of key sentences or statements used by either or both the staff and customer. Technology can provide evidence beyond reasonable doubt.
Consistent but not routine
It is not uncommon for companies to develop a routine for monitoring and supervision. This is usually done for purposes of planning. Planning is good but customers do not warn companies when they are coming to do business with them. They expect good quality service at all times, in all departments, across all branches/business offices and that is exactly how monitoring exercises should be carried out.
