In a previous life I was Customer Service Manager for a financial institution. This role involved crafting the banks service philosophy, policies, standard operating procedures as well as training and developing staff. In all my years of work, I think this was my best role; on account of the fact that it was so challenging and my Director (Mohammed Inuwa Shehu… shout out Boss!) granted me carte blanche to develop my forty person team. Only confident and well-grounded leaders would do that…but I digress.
One of the things I had to do was create the banks Customer Charter; which was both fun and challenging. It was at this point that I stumbled upon Kelly Mooney’s Ten Demandments of the Customer. These ‘demandments’ are presented as the key to turning the most demanding customers into the most delighted customers. At a point when my organizations customer service index was flat lining this was just what the doctor ordered.
The organisation went on to score top percentile marks in customer service and we attribute it to some of the strategic measures we took. I will explore some of these in later blog posts. For now I want to share how I adapted the Ten Demandments for our particular objective. First let’s look at Mooney’s original Ten Demandments; they are:
- Earn my trust through respect, integrity, advocacy and quality.
- Inspire me through immersive experiences, motivating messages and related philanthropy.
- Make it easy with simplicity, speed and usefulness.
- Put me in charge of making choices and give me control.
- Guide me with expert advice, education and information.
- Give me 24/7 access, from anywhere, at any time.
- Get to know me — listen, learn and study me, the real consumer, not just data.
- Exceed my expectations with uncommon courtesies and surprising services.
- Reward me with points programs, privileges of access or other worthwhile extras.
- Stay with me with follow through and meaningful follow-up.
It’s amazing how some organizations don’t get their customer service culture right with templates like this; this is simple enough to follow, right? Simply, know your customer, win their trust, inspire, let them feel in control, show customers the ropes help them know the drill, know what they want AND do much more, and keep your hand on the horse…! So why do so many of us get it wrong?
I am a passionate customer service advocate (please visit our community ‘www.facebook.com/customerservicenigeria/’ and share your personal customer service experiences) and I really don’t get why companies don’t strategically implement these demandments to serve their customers. But I digress…
In strategically crafting our customer service philosophy and policy using the Ten Demandments style (no, we did not copy…we customized) we tooled our Demandments to both our industry and customers. We also paid keen attention to the current major pain points our customers were experiencing at that time. I may make it sound simple, not but it isn’t as simple as it sounds. This is what we came up with:
“At XYZ Bank (sorry, won’t share the name of the institution), each and every staff is expected to and must at all times deliver consistently exceptional service to our patrons. We must ensure that we adhere to the following ‘Demandments’ when dealing with both internal and external customers:
- Consistently treat customers fairly and with respect, irrespective of who they are, their ethnicity or income
- Offer friendly and polite service and be sensitive to customers’ unique requirements/needs
- Process all customer communication (either letters, phone calls, emails or face to face enquiries) promptly giving them adequate priority
- Ensure confidentiality of all customer information at all times
- Provide valuable, easy to understand and up to date feedback to all customers at all times in respect of information they seek
- Ensure that integrity is at the core of all our dealings and transactions with customers
- Consistently remember the Customer is the reason we are here
To gain traction with your Demandments, you have to ensure that they are relevant for your environment, current challenges and are sufficiently easy for each member of your team to both understand and execute. Team buy in is absolutely essential. If you miss it at this point, you miss it at the execution point as well.
The most important thing is that for where we were as a financial institution at that time, these demandments were exactly what our customers required from us, and we inscribed these demands in our culture and corporate DNA. The document that had these ‘Demandments’ also carried clear penalties for divergent behavior (in addition to other specific charter statements).
Do you think this is simple enough to adapt in your organisation and team? You will find immense value relating to your team at a granular level exactly what your customers want. To help you craft your unique demandments, start by asking these questions:
- Who are our customers? Do they have any special needs? I recommend drawing up a customer Avatar
- Why do these customers come to us and not the competition?
- What do these customers expect?
- What superlative experience can we provide ancillary to providing the expected service?
- How can we make the customer comfortable and confident interacting with our company?
- What barriers or cultural roadblocks need to come down in our service delivery chain?
- What are the communication surface areas where we can maintain contact with our customers? Where can they be found?
Have you ever crafted a customer service policy? How did you arrive at your policy statements and how did you gain employee buy in? I will be glad to learn from you. Meanwhile, please share this and hopefully we can do our part in strengthening the customer service culture in our organizations.
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