Many companies and teams participated in National Customer Service Week last week. That’s great as a start, but what is happening now that the balloons have come down, people have been quite properly recognised and rewarded, and things are going back to ‘normal’?
I was talking to a company a week or two ago about the Olympic and Paralympic Games. This company are based in London and most of their activity is in and around London. During the Olympic and Paralympic Games they had made sure their front line people were properly resourced at all times, had empowered them to make decisions without referring them upwards if it was in the interest of the customer to do so, and even the senior team admitted that they had ‘thoroughly enjoyed’ the experience. I asked the question ‘Why has everything now gone back to ‘normal’?’
The response saddened me a little. ‘We couldn’t possibly keep up that level of activity permanently’. So, here we had something around 2,000 people who thoroughly enjoyed coming to work for several weeks, but then had gone back to their default levels of focus and enthusiasm once the goal of providing a fantastic experience to the Olympians, Paralympians and the hundreds of thousands of extra visitors to London had been achieved. What a missed opportunity to de-brief and to inspire a more permanent focus on delivering on the company’s goal.
What would have happened if the great athletes who gave us such a fantastic Games had given up after a few weeks! Most of them had trained hard for four years for their moment in the spotlight, and most gave a performance of which they could be proud.
National Customer Service Week gives us a similar opportunity, in my opinion. I hope that all the teams who were involved last week are having a de-brief session today around:
- What did we do well during NCSW?
- What could we have done better?
- What can we carry on doing, on a daily basis, even though it’s not NCSW any more?
- What have we learned from being involved in NCSW 2012?
- How are we going to use this experience to create a better workplace permanently?
Involve everyone in the team, from the front line to directors. And then make sure there’s an action plan at the end, and individuals are measured on their rsponsibility to put those actions ideas into deeds!
What are you waiting for? 🙂
Thanks to the Institute of Customer Service for the use of their logo. I hope they don’t mind! I am a former Companion Member of the ICS.