Review the quality of customer service
Overview
This standard is part of the customer service competence area related to Customer Service Management. It includes reviewing the quality of customer service. 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 needs to know how effectively customer service is being delivered to establish if customer satisfaction and loyalty. You plan to review the quality of your organisation's customer service by collecting and analysing information. You develop conclusions and recommendations and then report your findings to decision makers. You approach the review of customer service quality systematically and make full use of your findings. You also take a systematic approach to reviewing and re-engineering customer service processes. Your review balances customer satisfaction, cost awareness and compliance with regulation. Your reviews are undertaken with the agreement and support of colleagues with authority to make changes. You also take account of the views of colleagues who deliver the process and are in direct contact with customers.
This standard is for customer service professionals on supervisory or managerial levels who review the quality of customer service within their organisation.
Performance criteria
You must be able to:
- identify the features of customer service delivery that affect customer satisfaction and loyalty
- plan reviews of customer service delivery features and processes that affect customer satisfaction and loyalty using defined criteria
- agree the boundaries of customer service processes to be reviewed with decision makers
- set parameters for the types of change possible during process re-engineering
communicate the aims of reviews with colleagues who are affected
5. implement your plans for reviewing customer service features and processes
6. identify all the key steps in customer service processes
7. analyse each step in the customer service processes in fine detail
8. assess each step in the customer service processes considering customer satisfaction, costs and compliance with relevant regulation
9. raise questions about each step in the current process to establish where there is scope for development and improvement
10. explore all the questions raised with colleagues involved in the process and their managers
11. analyse the information you have collected to identify patterns and trends
12. compare the conclusions of your analysis with the defined criteria
13. adapt your approaches if the agreed methods of collecting and analysing information are ineffective
14. identify and evaluate options for re-engineering improvements
15. communicate the results of your reviews to customer service decision makers
16. agree with decision makers the actions to improve customer service based on your reviews of features and processes
17. plan the implementation of agreed recommendations for improving customer service features and processes
18. implement re-engineering of customer service processes
19. monitor the results of implementing re-engineering of the customer service process
20. 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:
- the importance of measuring the quality of customer service including levels of satisfaction and loyalty
- how to identify the features and processes that affect your customers satisfaction with your organisation
- how to plan to review customer service delivery including defining the criteria you will use for measurement of customer service
- the types of information collection methods that you can use in your organisation
- how to make use of all available sources of information and feedback about service quality including what is available through social media
- the ways to establish boundaries around a customer service process to be re-engineered
- the decision makers who need to be involved when re-engineering processes to ensure that the recommendations can be implemented
- the importance of communicating with those involved in service delivery when re-engineering the process
- the ways to analyse and assess the effectiveness of separate steps in the customer service process
- the importance of identifying the right questions to challenge existing customer service processes
- the techniques used to explore processes with customer service colleagues and their managers
- the methods of analysing information on the quality of customer service to identify patterns and trends in the data
- the importance of comparing conclusions with the criteria you defined during planning
- how to identify recommendations that flow from your review of customer service
- the procedures and formats for making recommendations on customer service improvements within your organisation
- the communication methods used to agree actions for improvements with decision makers and their teams
- how to plan the implementation of customer service improvements when your recommendations have been agreed
- the techniques for implementing changes in customer service processes
- the importance of monitoring the results of customer service process changes
- the legal, organisational, codes of practice and policies relevant to your role and the activities being carried out