Support and implement customer service improvements
Overview
This standard is part of the customer service competence area related to Customer Service Management. It includes supporting and implementing customer service improvements. It covers activities and approaches that play a vital part in customer service by seeking and implementing improvements and developments. Remember that customers include everyone to whom you provide products and services. They may be external to your organisation or they may be internal customers.
Your organisation changes the way they deliver service as customer expectations rise when other organisations improve the services they offer. You deliver customer service and support your organisation to implement changes, presenting them positively to your customers. By listening to customer comments, you also have your own ideas about how the service you deliver could be improved. You present your own ideas for improvements to decision makers in your organisation who can authorise implementation of changes. You contribute to planning customer service improvements, maintain the changes that need to take place to implement improvements, and help to evaluate the results.
This standard is for customer service professionals on supervisory or managerial levels who support and implement customer service improvements.
Performance criteria
You must be able to:
- gather formal and informal feedback from your customers
- use your organisation's procedures to gather feedback from your customers
- use the information from your customers to develop your understanding of their customer service experience
- identify changes that could be made to improve customer service based on information you have gathered
- present your ideas for improving customer service to decision makers with authority to approve the changes
- plan the introduction of customer service improvements, including the resources required to implement them
- evaluate factors that may help or hinder the introduction of improvements
- develop realistic objectives, tasks and schedules for the introduction of improvements and agree them with your team
- plan how you will evaluate customer service improvements
- inform the colleagues who will be affected by changes and win their support for implementation of your ideas
- support changes to customer service based on ideas proposed by other team members
- keep your customers informed of changes to customer service giving a positive impression of the changes
- resolve any difficulties that arise during the implementation of improvements
- provide support to your colleagues who are involved with changes and improvements
- ensure improvements are implemented within the agreed time and budget
- work with your team to identify any negative effects of changes and plan to avoid them
- monitor the impact that the changes have on customer service quality
- recommend any further changes that may be necessary to decision makers
- identify any learning from the change process for future improvement activities
- follow the legal, organisational, codes of practice and policies relevant to your role and the activities being carried out
Knowledge and Understanding
You need to know and understand:
- how customer experience is influenced by the way service is delivered and the importance of gathering formal and informal feedback
- how to gather formal and informal customer feedback using your organisation's procedures to capture information
- the methods that can be used to understand your organisation's customer service from the customers perspective
- how to use customer feedback and your own experience of delivering customer service to identify changes that could improve your organisation's service
- the decision makers in your organisation who can authorise changes and how to present your ideas to them
- the importance of careful planning when introducing changes
- the types of factors that may help or hinder the process of change and how to identify and plan for these
- how to develop plans that contain realistic objectives, tasks and schedules
- the importance of planning the evaluation of customer service improvements implemented
- the importance of clear communication with your team when changes are taking place and how to win over staff who are resistant to change
- how to develop your understanding and commit to ideas for changes that other team members have suggested
- how to work with others to identify and support change in the way service is delivered
- why it is important to give a positive impression to your customer about the changes made by your organisation even if you disagree with them
- the types of support that your team may need when improvements are being implemented and how to provide support
- why it is important to complete change on time and within budget
- the importance of identifying any negative effects of customer services changes that were not anticipated and take action to avoid them to minimise their impact
- how to monitor and evaluate the impact of changes on customer service quality
- the methods used to recommend further changes that are identified through monitoring and evaluation processes
- why it is important to evaluate changes and to note what has been learned for future initiatives
- the legal, organisational, codes of practice and policies relevant to your role and the activities being carried out