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13 Ways Leadership Can Lead Employees To Provide World-Class Customer Service

This article is more than 7 years old.

When you're a leader, it’s easy to say that you value great customer service.  But how do you get this message to actually stick with your employees, to the point that they actually translate it into the great customer service behaviors that make a difference to customers?   Here are thirteen ways to make this happen.

1. Lead by example - No matter what you say, your actions will speak much louder than your words. And a single action, a single example, by a leader affects more than the people who witnessed it; the employee grapevine is very fast and strong and word will spread.  So, if you want employees to know that you value great customer service, then demonstrate this yourself—and be very careful to avoid demonstrating the converse.

For example, if you want employees to feel empowered to assist customers in creative ways, the moment you reprimand a single employee for “giving away the store,” every other employee will then revert to their previous, timid ways, and never go out of their way for a customer again.

London street signage: "Changed Priorities Ahead" © Micah Solomon micah@micahsolomon.com

2. Establish core values or principles. These are not to be confused with scripts. Rather these define the reasons why you are in business--what the purpose of every employee is at work, every day.  Your employees may not get there with each customer every day, but every step they take should be in that direction.  [More on this here.]

3. Make it clear to employees that customer service is part of your mission, starting at orientation. Employees are sponges on their first day on the job. Too often orientation is like saying, "Welcome. And now here are all the ways you can get fired from here." Not exactly a warm fuzzy on Day One.  [more on this ­here and here]

4. Benchmark across industries, and encourage your employees to do the same. Make it clear that you’re interested in hearing about – and emulating – great customer service practices no matter where those practices originated.  This is both an important way to grow as an organization and an important stimulus to employees to be always on the lookout for great customer service in the performance of other companies and in how they do things themselves, day to day.

5. Role play specific scenarios.   It’s one thing to say “we value customer service.”  It’s another to ask employees to act out, in specific scenarios, what they feel “great customer service” looks like.   No employee should ever practice on a customer. Situations should be presented and played out backstage. To develop good material for these roleplays, ask employees for their real life "Never saw that one coming" incidents.

6. Have employees write themselves a thank-you letter.  As a customer service trainer, this is one of the most popular exercises in my training.  It’s simple:  Have every employee write a thank-you note to themselves, praising them for going above and beyond in specific ways for a specific customer.  Their example can be hypothetical, but in my experience, they usually make it factual.  This builds up encouragement, and makes them eager to do good by the next customer they come in contact with as well.

7. Reinforce daily. Customer service training is not a Day One and Done kind of thing. It is a leader's obligation to continually reinforce the principles of customer service excellence.  (For a look at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company's highly effective approach to daily reinforcement – it only takes ten minutes a day – click here.)

8. Celebrate. Be sure to commend your customer service heroes and applaud the contributions of everyone in a group setting. Call it the monthly rally rather than a town hall meeting (If you were an employee which would you rather attend?) to recognize milestone achievements.

9. Post "wow notes". If your customers are writing rave reviews of your employees, be sure to share them company wide.

10. Post the "sour notes." Share the bad incidents with employees (removing the names of those directly involved) so that they are prepared to handle any similar incidents more favorably.

11. Ask for suggestions. Don't just rely on customer surveys. Every frontline employee knows 100% of all the customer complaints and concerns because customers tell them every day. Be sure there is a process to allow them to deliver to you directly "bad news fast."

12. Be sure that employees have all the tools to do their jobs. Few things are more demoralizing to an employee than to not have the tools to do the job right, whether those tools are mops and buckets or intuitive, fast software. Not sure if this is a problem?  Ask your employees—they’ll tell you.

13. Show you care. Too often communication is top down. So always ask at the end of every conversation with each employee, "Now is there anything I can do for you?" 

*****

Credit where credit is due: The list in this article is the work of myself (Micah Solomon) along with Bill Quiseng, another customer service thought leader, whom you should be following at @billquiseng.

Micah Solomon recently named a "new guru of customer service excellence" by the Financial Post,

is a customer experience consultant, customer service consultant, thought leader, keynote speaker, customer service trainer, and bestselling author. Click here for two free chapters from Micah's latest book .