Develop a customer service strategy
Overview
This standard is part of the customer service competence area related to Customer Service Management. It includes developing a customer service strategy. 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.
To be consistently successful in customer service, your organisation needs a customer service strategy. You use your knowledge of your organisation's customers and your expertise in customer service to develop a customer service strategy that aligns with your organisation's overall strategy for your area of responsibility. You base your strategy on research into other organisations and current trends in customer service and consult your team for their opinions.
This standard is for customer service professionals on supervisory or managerial levels who develop a customer service strategy.
Performance criteria
You must be able to:
- identify your organisation's overall business strategy, values, aims and objectives
- identify how your area of responsibility supports the achievement of your organisation's overall business strategy
- evaluate the implications of the overall business strategy for customer service in your area of responsibility
- confirm the implications of the overall business strategy for delivering customer service with your manager
- identify other organisations that represent models of good practice in customer service
- evaluate the key features of customer service in other organisations and the principles that underpin their approaches
- analyse current research on trends and developments in customer service
- explore the implications of your research for your area of responsibility
- discuss the outcomes of your research with your team to agree what you will include in your customer service strategy
- construct a customer service strategy for your area of responsibility
- define customer service strategy values, aims and objectives based on your research for your area of responsibility
- identify processes and communication channels for customer service that match your defined values, aims and objectives
- outline how you will evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy
- agree your customer service strategy with your manager
- 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 to access information on your organisation's overall business strategy and analyse its implications for your area of responsibility
- the operational objectives for your area of responsibility and how these link to your organisation's overall business strategy
- the importance of having a customer service strategy for your area of responsibility and how to align it with your organisation's business strategy
- the sources of information you can use to find out about your customers and their expectations
- how to identify other organisations which might represent models of best practice in customer service that you can learn from
- the principles that underpin other organisation's approaches to customer service and how to evaluate their key features to identify those that you would like to implement in your own organisation
- the sources of research on trends and developments in customer service, including how to access and analyse them
- the importance of using the findings from your research to identify what you need to include in your customer service strategy
- how to share your research findings with your team, discuss the implications and agree what you should include in your customer service strategy
- the methods used to develop a customer service strategy and what it should include
- how to define values, aims and objectives relevant to your area of responsibility and the strategic objectives that have been agreed
- the communication channels and processes that support customer service within your organisation
- the methods used to evaluate how effective your customer service strategy is in meeting strategic objectives
- the procedures for making recommendations to your manager and how to agree your strategy
- the legal, organisational, codes of practice and policies relevant to your role and the activities being carried out