TABLE OF CONTENTS What's in This Chapter?
Assessing organizational needs for a customer service programme
Strategic planning and the customer service initiative
Not all organizations are ready for customer service training. In fact, you can really stir up the pot if senior management is not supportive of training. Imagine this worst-case scenario: You do frontline training, get a great response, have people really enthusiastic about improving service and then wham! They go back to their work environments and their managers say, That won't work here! Such a situation could be very demotivating.
To avoid that scenario, consider doing some research before you begin. Structured interviews, focus groups, surveys and strategic needs assessments are all good ways to learn about the needs of an organization and to gain support for your training programme.
Start structured interviews as high up in the organization as you can go, with the managing director if possible. Make sure that you include input from human resource personnel and line or operations managers and supervisors. Managers and team leaders will want to tell you what they have seen and what they consider the most pressing customer service issues in the organization.
The questions below can be useful when holding structured interviews with managers, but similar questions can be used for supervisors and employees. Asking these questions will elicit a lot of useful information. If the answers indicate that procedures, product knowledge, equipment, or concerns other than courtesy are problems, it would be beneficial to follow up...
