Customer Service Leadership - Term Paper Example

Delivering Service Excellence Introduction In the interests of ongoing professional development any organization that engages in regular contact with the general public – either as consumers (or constituents) must maintain a constant commitment to the advancement of customer service and service leadership. Customers depend upon the perception that the organization with which they are engaged as a responsive mechanism that is attenuated to their specific needs and complaints. Leadership in the area of customer service, leading to service excellence is essential in the maintenance of loyalty to the organization in question. Moreover, service excellence represents the ability to react and respond to challenges affecting the organization and presents not only a mechanism for the benefit of customers, but also a means by which the organization can alert itself to persistent problems in the goods or services they deliver. A useful example of this dynamic can be found within the hospitality industry. In this sort of there is direct contact with no degrees of separation between the operation and the general public. There is brand visibility – certainly with respect to the larger corporations, and a form of brand loyalty is possible. While using the services of the hospitality industry, the customer is likely cognizant of multiple details concerning the service and facilities in a way which they might not be for a business engaged purely in manufacturing pursuits. Some consumer goods are used and consumed, or used only on occasion as circumstances warrant. But a hotel or motel will very likely engage the attention of the consumer through the necessity of immersion while they are on the premises. In the advent of any problem, question, or difficulty, the importance of customer service cannot be overstated. There is a form of duality in service to a particular customer: passive and active. For products or services, the appearance and the nature of the item itself (or the room) is indicative of the resources and professionalism of the enterprise at hand. A newly purchased trade good must appear clean and functional – a similar assumption holds true for a hotel room as well. The initial presentation of the product or service forms of first impression in the mind of the customer, and this is the underlying root from which any attempt at service leadership must begin. When an issue with the passive attributes of the product or service arises, then the active portion of customer service begins. This is where an intelligent and well-informed staff strives to present information and compensation if necessary, to alleviate customer concerns. But both areas are of concern to the change management consultant. The management of the company must act judiciously in the assignment and treatment of employees in order to produce an effective product or service that will pass initial inspection in terms of the passive customer service. The employees themselves are largely responsible for the active dimension, but the administration of the company controls how and to what extent employees will be able to effectively respond to diverse customer needs. Either instance requires effective service leadership. A specific organization with a vested interest in service leadership a specific organization with a vested interest in service leadership would be the Woodlands Inn located in the Charleston South Carolina area. This facility is already award-winning, but in a competitive environment, an organization must always maintain a culture of professionalism and improvement in order to remain successful (Kirkpatrick, 2011). Woodlands has already won the AAA five diamond award 12 times, and is the six-time winner of the Mobil five-star award. Both room quality and dining service have merited five-star ratings (Seidler, 2008). Here the challenge is less about a new threshold for improvement, but maintaining successful standards so that the organization can continue to deliver high-quality service. This is accomplished through self-reflection on part of the hotel's administration. The quality of service is excellent, the manager must ask him or herself how to ensure and maintain competence in the staff? Is it possible to improve actual physical treatment of customers? And to what extent does the administration's management style influence relationships with staff? Woodlands resort can be easily measured based upon the aforementioned quality ratings they have achieved. Both in terms of room and dining services, they have been successful – and these two elements of the hospitality industry are an excellent standard of measurement for success. But even the most effective organizations cannot remain so if they rest on their laurels. Active engagement by management is necessary to solve and avert potential problems before they damage the success of an organization such as this. The principal philosophy underlying managerial styles is typically a form of exchange: in exchange for management concern and attention to the welfare of employees, there is the insistence for high-performance and professionalism. This assumption typically underscores relationships between management and staff. Maintaining this balance is integral to service leadership. Employee Relations For an organization such as Woodlands resort, the maintenance of high performance levels requires attention to early warning signs that the balance between staff and management may be faltering. At first there are obvious physical objectives which are not being met. The percentages of tardiness may increase, and well understood procedures may be violated. In such circumstances persist, then the logical step is to pinpoint the responsible employee and sanction or terminate them. The situation grows more complicated if multiple employees begin to exhibit similarly lax standards. In some cases it may be necessary to terminate employees, and another warning sign of organizational danger is an unusual increase in the number of terminations that appear to be necessary. This can lead to considerable fear and uncertainty among staff members, which is often represented by unwillingness by staff to make decisions, coupled with uncertainty concerning the correct response based on company policy. This is indicative of poor relations between staff and management. Even an organization with high standards of performance must take proactive steps to prevent issues such as this in order to maintain their dominance in the field. There are a number of actionable steps that management can undertake in order to alleviate a problem with employee relations, or prevent such a problem from occurring in the first place. The fundamental objective is increased personal engagement with employees. Most solutions to employee relation issues stem from some variant of this principle. Ways to foster engagement with employees would include being willing to assist staff members with difficult or unpleasant tasks, as well as taking the time to understand their personal situations – not only to gain an understanding of how employee personal situations might affect their work, but the willingness to do so can improve relations with that individual. At the same time, economic incentives should be used to address breaches in protocol when and where they occur. Poor performance must be confronted, and incentives must be provided for superior performance. This might take the form of salary or benefits advantages. Other ways to foster engagement would include incorporating staff members during the decision-making process. Employee input should be factored in concerning major decisions affecting facility, or the recruitment of new employees (Owyang, 2010). Employee Authority What are the symptoms of a troubled relationship as described above, our employees afraid to make decisions due to uncertainties or perceptions of mercurial reprisals on part of management? A second principle necessary for service leadership is to establish clearly delineated powers for each employee based upon their position. There must be a perception of leeway, along with accountability for those decisions. Even for successful organization, it is essential to establish benchmarks for employee decision-making as economic circumstances change, old protocols may lose validity. Therefore the successful enterprise must regularly maintain a proactive strategy as economic situations change in order to update benchmarks for employee decision-making. As before, there are certain warning signs that staff members are experiencing ambiguity concerning respective decision-making authority: Excessive questions forwarded to management concerning issues that seem relatively minor. One consequence of this behavior is a decrease in the willingness of customers to complement staff members on their creativity. Ideally, in industries with a high level of customer contact content and caring employees will attempt to anticipate customers’ needs and make the most probable requests easy to fulfill on-demand. This becomes less likely if there are uncertain boundaries concerning the authority of individual staff members regarding the expenditure of resources, and what provisions are or are not available at customer request. Other symptoms of poor staff relations would relate to an apparent increased necessity for the turnover of staff through firing/terminations. Undoubtedly, if the trend develops within management that encourages excessive terminations this will detract from the willingness of employees to take any form of proactive steps for fear of retaliation. An immediate, deliberate action recommended on part of management – even in a successful organization in order to prevent or alleviate such a problem would be the implementation of an employee review policy: One-on-one meetings between staff members and their supervisor. An organization that already uses this method should attempt to solicit ideas for improvement on part of staff members. If the staff members perceive a termination risk from doing so, a confidential suggestion box (or perhaps e-mail account) could be established for the presentation of legitimate concerns and ideas for improvement. In the meantime, during individual meetings clear boundaries and guidelines should be established from supervisors to employees. A policy should be in place whereby meetings with staff should be implemented in the instance of a change in policy or facilities in order to ensure that any changes in guidelines are properly understood. An additional proactive recommendation in the event of complex or uncertain regulations would be to set up time for staff members and supervisors to role-play appropriate responses to gain a more in-depth understanding of precisely what is expected of employees. Employee Efficiency Once employee expectations have been made clear, the administration of the organization must take steps not only to hire competent employees, but to create a culture of ongoing professional development so that standards of competence are maintained. Warning signs that employees are improperly trained or lack the necessary experiential background to perform their essential duties would be reports in which training time either for new employees or for current employees to master new procedures is taking more time than is expected. This is especially problematic if there are shortfalls concerning the availability of adequate employees due to an excessive number being relegated to training, or retraining. On the side of customers, complaints may exist where in employees do not seem sufficiently competent at the tasks reasonably expected of them (Seilder, 2008). Such as a hotel concierge who takes too long to perform routine check-in functions, for example. An underlying cause of such difficulties may relate to a corporate culture where by training is generally restricted. If the immediate managers of staff members who directly engage employees exhibit a behavioral pattern whereby new knowledge is not shared, possibly due to an unwillingness to devote adequate time to employee training than customer service suffers. In this situation, employees may exhibit considerable resistance towards undertaking new functions not explicitly stated in writing as their job responsibilities. This state of affairs represents a flaw in service leadership, and ultimately the business as a whole will suffer in a weakness exists in the training program itself, or the willingness to allow staff members access to training. Time and money seemingly saved in the short term will damage the long-term viability of the enterprise as a whole, as poorly trained staff members fumble over their collective duties to the regret of customers that choose to do business at the establishment, a regret that customers will not tolerate for long. As a proactive measure, rather than keeping knowledge to themselves or reserving it only for valuable supervisors, new skills and ideas should be practiced by managers, and then introduced the staff. If the organization – such as Woodlands resort is already successful, then that company can afford to invest in a consultant to evaluate their orientation programs to determine the relative effectiveness based upon the complexity of the tasks and the capabilities of staff members given their backgrounds. Customer Feedback The other factors mentioned above represent obstacles towards the essential function of anticipating the needs of customers pertaining to the industry in question. Even if employees are confident and well treated, the organization is still at risk without a well-defined procedure for processing and resolution of customer complaints. Complaints must be taken seriously, especially in the hospitality industry with a wide range of choices available even in relatively small cities. It is necessary to put customer complaints in the proper context, and to ascribe them an appropriate level of urgency, as well as to designate the appropriate responses among staff members. Warning signs that customers might be aggravated by persistent, unresolved objections with the quality of service might include complaints of indifference on part of the staff to requests which appear simple and the customer’s perspective. Even if a logical reason exists whereby the complaint cannot be resolved in the manner described, many customers in a service intensive industry will feel they are at least owed an explanation. A lack of response on part of employees could be systemic of a deeper weakness in the organization concerning customer service and service leadership. Other issues that might elicit customer complaints would be an overall perception that staff members are less likely to offer complementary services beyond those absolutely mandated – the perception that employees will never go out of their way to ensure a customer’s comfort. Whether such a concern is factual or not is irrelevant, what matters is whether the customers perceive it to be true. An economic indicator of a weakness in the organization would be an overall increase in costs connected to relatively minor problems in the organization which in the past, have been resolved at a noticeably lower expenditure. But the solution to these issues has the potential not only to relieve customer complaints, but to increase satisfaction with the objective of securing company loyalty. The company with a vested interest in customer service should the task of management with collating similar themes that recur throughout customer requests and complaints. If, over the course of the year 100 customers complain that their hotel rooms are too hot for example, a reasonable extrapolation would be to place local thermostats in each room under customer control. Managers (or a specialist consultant) should identify common threads that underlie customer complaints in order to reveal the root issue underlying dissatisfaction. While it should be theoretically possible to proactively correct a persistent complaint troubling successions of customers, a well-run organization can go further, and extrapolate desires. A successful operation such as Woodlands resort undoubtedly satisfies most customers in most situations. Yet it is still likely to be in their interest to pursue a trend analysis to better understand the needs and motivations of those that frequent their facility. The prophet such an organization generates could be used to explore new ways to delight customers beyond any minimal expectation; in this context consultants could be hired with experience in the hospitality industry in order to turn a potential trend into an actionable recommendation. As it stands, much of the service industry meets, but rarely exceeds customer expectations (Echo, 2012). Summary The two forms of service leadership and customer service in general can take both active and passive forms, both in the initial presentation of the product or service – and in the responsiveness of staff members to problems that might arise. The preceding sections have addressed underlying complexities that impede this duality of function within industries with a high level of contact with the general public. It is worthwhile to condense and summarize these recommendations: 1.) Increased personal engagement with employees. 2.) Establish a meeting schedule with employees to clearly explain company policy and the decision-making authority of each staff member. 3.) Hire consultants to improve the efficiency of employee training. 4.) Perform trend analysis to determine the true desires of customers based on complaints and comments. Measures such as these will not only resolve immediate problems as they occur, but improvements in employee relations and satisfaction allows the company to put its best face forward in every context, and for the benefit of every customer. References Echo, 2012. 2012 Global Customer Service Barometer. Market Comparison of Findings. A research report prepared for: American Express. Echo: Global Research Protecting Business and Reputations. Kirkpatrick, D. (2011) Social power and the coming corporate revolution. Forbes Magazine: http://www.forbes.com/sites/techonomy/2011/09/07/social-powerand-the-coming-corporate-revolution/ Owyang, J. (2010) Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management. Altimeter Group. Seidler, B., 2008. The Five Stars of Customer Service Leadership. Woodlands Inn. South Carolina Governor's conference. Polarity Management Associates. Read More