Right, you have set and agreed your standard with the people who have to deliver it, now the next step is to communicate it. I have worked with, and been served by, countless people who seemed to have no idea of what standard of service they were supposed to be delivering. For instance, just this morning, I was served in my bank (Halifax, in case you’re wondering) by a young man who thought the standard there was to communicate as little as possible with the customer, and to look down his nose at me. The other members of the team who were on tills thought it was their ‘standard’ to be counting money, and studiously ignoring anyone who looked anything like a customer. Perhaps they had had the standard communicated to them, perhaps they hadn’t. Either way, there was something very wrong with the experience.
Everyone in an organisation should live and breathe ‘the standard’. It has to do with the core values of the business, and everyone should know what they are. The standard isn’t just about notices on walls, or thick manuals, it’s about behaviour. If you have caring behaviour in your business, that will come through in the way your customers are treated too.
So, communicating the standard is crucial. It should be what your company induction is built around, and what your performance management is all about. It needs to be written down, it needs to be spoken about, but most of all it neeeds to be role-modelled. When someone new joins your team, they should spend some time with a top role model before they are let loose on your customers, and if they start falling below standard, they should have the opportunity to spend more time with their positive role model. Making sure everyone in your team knows what is expected of them is a crucial part of any manager’s job – this is what ‘communicating the standard’ is all about.
Next time I will be writing about monitoring the standard.