Producing a service oriented culture with in any business is not an overnight activity, where you go to sleep one night and poof, the next morning you’re a well organized and service oriented company. These things take time and a lot of working. It is not only about putting up a fancy vision statement that says “We strive to provide excellent customers service”, because this becomes useless, without the proper strategies and training to support it.
In order to do this you would need to know your customers. Take a look at the number of customers who shop at your establishment, what are the age range, does it consist of more females than males, what are their buying pattern and preferences. All this data would give you a better idea on how you are to formulate your customer service strategies and training.
In order to build a customer service oriented culture, one would need to look at improving or implementing certain policies.
The first step would be to hire the right person for the job. And because it can be a very expensive process as well as the most important period in selecting the right candidate, you need to be very cautious in the methods you choose and how you go about it. This does not mean that any Don Joe who is highly educated, you will just grab at him, to fill the position. It require a little more than that, you need to carefully analyze whether or not this person suites your environment. Ask yourself, what are the criteria of my organization? Is it a fast pace environment, which would require a person to commit a lot of time and energy to. Then would a male or a female suit the position best, if it’s a female, would I need a person without children, because of the demand on time, if it’s a male do I need someone between the ages of 18-30 or would a more mature individual appeal best to my customers.
You may even want to see how well they handle themselves in certain situations, by giving them a scenario and asking them how they would handle it. Or you can even use an IQ test; there are a lot of options. During this interviewing process you would also need to look at their general persona, to see how well they would mesh with other individuals in the organization. There are a number of different interviewing methods that you can use, just choosing the one that suites you requirements is what you need to figure out, based upon your industry. And most important, before you apply any of these test or questions, seek legal advice on it first, you would not want to use any question or any test that may be discriminative in any way.
The second part is training your staff. This again would be determined on you organization and also your financial capabilities. So if you are a small enterprise and you’re working with a small budget, then using the "work with Mary” method can work and it widely used. This way the new employee gains experience through direct “hands on” involvement and also through the company’s cultural methods. But if your don’t mind making the big investments, then you can hire a professional consultancy firms, which will do the training for you. It is also a good practice that you document these operating procedures and makes it easily available to staff for future referral.
The final step is up-keeping these practices. You can make improvements to them but make sure that they are practiced on a day to day basis. Enforcing these practices are only going to make you better at it and it can also open you up to new ideas.
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