Presentation at ARLG 2016 conference

1. Embedding Excellence
in Customer Service
Neil Potentier
Practitioner for Assessment Services

2. Contents
• Me
• Setting the Scene
• Pre-requisites for Excellent Customer Service
• Instilling & Validating Excellent Customer Service
• Sharing Best Practice
• Future Challenges
• Question Time

3. Me
• Passionate about excellent
service
• Tells the organisation
• Tells others (advocate)
• Complains
• Expects action and
improvement
• Tells others about bad
experiences

4. Setting the Scene – The Eternal
Triangle
£Pipeline
People
CustomersQuality
Investors in People
Customer Service
Excellence
Your Industry
Standard

5. Stock-check…..
•Is your pipeline
protected
•Have you got the 3
essentials in
place?
•How do you know?

7. Pre-requisites for Customer
Excellence
• Product and service
• People
• Policies
• Procedures
• Processes
• Performance targets
• Professionalism and ethics
• Promotion

8. Stock Check…..
• Have you got all the P’s in
place?
• Are they fit for purpose?
• Are they customer friendly?
• Can they help create
excellence?

9. People
• Recruiting attitude
• Self-motivated
• Empowered
• Responsible/accountable
• Professional, ethical, genuine, friendly and caring
• Meet change positively
• Reflect and continually improve (Kolb & Fry Mind-set)

10. People - Kolb & Fry Mind-Set

11. People – Model Employees
• Continually review their own performance and ask if they can do things better for the customer.
• Has the ability to think of the ways by which they can do things better for the customer and the
organisation
• Has the courage to try out the new ways (with management support)
• Is a role model and exemplar of delivering excellent customer service.
• Has the honesty to admit they got it wrong, but to learn from their mistakes.
• Does not see change has a threat but can adapt to meet it head-on.
• Does not blame others for their shortcomings but works with them to help them improve.

12. People – Model Employee continued…
• Does not pass the blame to others and uses the collective ‘we’ to apologise to customers
• If an issue is raised personally with them by a customer they take ownership and close it out to a
satisfactory conclusion.
• Displays a positive mind-set and a ‘can-do’ attitude with regard to delivering customer service.
• Is professional, ethical, honest and transparent with management, colleagues and customers.
• Is loyal and committed to the organisation
• Above all sees their customers as the main focus and purpose of their work.

13. Stock-check…..
• Have your people got a
Kolb & Fry Mind-set?
• Do your managers provide
the right climate?
• Have you got Model
Employees?
• How do you know?

14. Instilling and Validating Customer
Excellence
• Derived from Best Practice
• Provides structure and
discipline
• Creates milestones
• Validates excellence
• Rewards excellence
• Embeds continuous
improvement

15. The Customer Service Excellence
Standard
• Issued under licence by Cabinet Office
• Previously Chartermark
• 5 Criteria/57 Elements – Compliance, Partial Compliance and
Compliance Plus
• 1 – Customer Insight
• 2 – The Culture of the Organisation
• 3 – Information and Access
• 4 – Delivery
• 5 – Timeliness and Quality of Service

16. Best Practice
• Increasing use of Apps
• Emergence of Virtual Chat
• ‘Hotel Style’ performance ratings
• Matching data to individual preferences
• One-stop individual service
• Voice and thumb recognition
• In-your-face signage and notices

17. Future Challenges
• Keeping up with/keeping ahead of advances in technology
• Providing learning space for your students
• Signposting to available learning space
• Supporting them remotely
• Dealing with survey saturation
• Identifying your advocates
• Using advocates to promote you
• ‘Customers can be our second marketing dept’

19. The Ultimate Challenge
• How can you go on continually transforming and improving the
customer experience so they get the ‘wow’ factor and become
advocates for you and also become your friend to the extent
they are with you when things go wrong? They will willingly and
proactively provide you with feedback at every opportunity

21. The Final Stock Check…..
•Are you
ready for the
challenges
ahead?