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I’m often asked how to enthusiastically engage technicians in business promotion to create a service experience like the one I describe in my book, Beyond GREAT SERVICE, The Technician’s Role in Proactive Business Growth. In answer to this question, here is a summary of the 5 Steps to a service experience that is beyond great.

Critical to our success is the recognition by technician and management alike, that business promotion is an important part of the service delivery and not a sale. They must appreciate that when we take proactive steps to make these recommendations that will help our customers to be better off we greatly enhance the service value and the service experience. With the intention of promoting our services to help our customers, this proactive approach will become a significant differentiator in a competitive environment where service providers must fight for every dollar and fight for the right to hold, maintain and develop customer relationships.

With this in mind, here are the 5 steps that you can take to deliver a service experience that is beyond great.

Step 1: Assess your Current Position Against Best Practices. An honest review of your service delivery against the critical success factors behind delivering a “beyond great” service allows you to access your current position, recognize your strengths and take action to capitalize on opportunities for improvement. Here is a link to a handy assessment tool to make this evaluation.

Step 2: Define the Service Experience you want your Customers to Enjoy. A clear vision of the service you will deliver through the proactive promotional efforts of your technicians provides the foundation for good planning and execution of the plan. While Step 1 gives you your current position, Step 2 gives you where you want to go and enables you to create your unique roadmap to success. A clear vision also helps you communicate the value behind the initiative to engage your technicians, company stakeholders and, of course, your customers. To explore how to define the service experience, check out this blog.

Step 3: Train to Win. You would never think of sending your technicians out to work on equipment for which they have had no training. If product or service promotion is part of the service our technicians provide, why would we treat this service any differently? Through training, we have an opportunity to:

• Help our field team recognize their role as a service so that they enthusiastically embrace it
• Clearly define the service experience that will be delivered by our technicians to add value to our service relationships and create a sustainable competitive advantage
• Add to their skills so that they can be more successful in helping customers recognize the value in their recommendations

Here is a link to our Proactive Service® Workshop.

Step 4: Ensure Processes and Systems Support the Proactive Efforts of your Technicians. Like any service, you will want to ensure that you have the processes and systems in place to ensure flawless execution of the strategy. This includes how opportunities will be captured, how they will be followed up, how status will be communicated and how the technicians will contribute to the solution.

Keep in mind that our processes and systems is one of several hurdles that you will need to address to unleash the full power of your team. For more details on typical hurdles to success and how to deal with them, download this article.

Step 5: Maintain Momentum. Once the plan, processes and training are in place, our continued success will hinge on our willingness and ability to maintain momentum. We must consider such factors as:

• How will we maintain the levels of enthusiasm we have been able to generate to date?
• What options can we take to keep the initiative fresh in everyone’s mind?
• What opportunities can we capitalize on to observe and coach our field service teams?
• What plan do we have to review key skills?
• What steps will we take to practice these skills to ensure that we deliver a service that is beyond great?

Delivering a service that is beyond great is not easy. If it were, everyone would be doing it today. The benefits, however, are well worth the effort. If you can successfully engage your field service team in proactive promotion of your services as part of the service that they provide, you can expect:

• Increased revenue and profitability
• Improved customer satisfaction and retention
• More customer referrals
• Increased employee satisfaction and reduced turnover
• Better labour planning
• A more enjoyable and less stressful working environment for all

If you have not yet started on the journey, why not take the first step? I would be delighted to hear from you.

As always I welcome your questions and your feedback. You can connect with me via telephone or email or leave a comment right here on the site. And as always, please feel free to leave a link back to your own blog if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site. If you are reading this blog post via email, you will need to locate this post on my website by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the comment section.

Jim Baston

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”

– Lao Tzu

The post 5 Steps to a Service Experience that is Beyond Great appeared first on jimbaston.com.

While visiting family in the UK, we decided to take a brief break in a part of the country we had not been before.  We headed for Cambridge and the wonderful colleges and booked a small inn in a village not far from the city.  It was an old stone building that had recently been converted.  We found it on the internet and were impressed with the descriptions previous patrons had written about it.  Quaint, attentive, old-world character, friendly staff.  Perfect.

We drove out to Cambridge full of anticipation and, by early evening, we found this small, quaint “post card” inn situated on the quiet main street of the village.  There was a newly constructed glassed-in dining area at the back and a large parking lot which was almost full.  Must be a popular spot!  As we walked past the dining room to the entrance, we noticed that it too was full.  It turns out that there was a wedding that evening.

Check-in was friendly but not exceptional.  The room was small, clean and functional.  It overlooked the glassed-in dining area – we could look down and see the wedding party having dinner.  We went out to dinner ourselves.  We returned about 9:30, both tired and ready for bed.  However, sleep was not to come easy.

By the time we returned, the wedding was in full swing.  The music was loud – very loud.  Too loud!  Our little room literally shock to the beat.  We called the front desk to ask for another room and were informed that they were fully booked.  There was nothing else available.  We were stuck.  The music continued until almost midnight.  We decided to grin and bear it.

At check out we expressed our disappointment.  We explained that we had expected a quiet, relaxing stay as promised on their website but we experienced just the opposite.  We felt that we should have been told about the wedding at the time of booking and advised about the noise problem associated with the room we were given.  We then could have made an informed decision about whether to stay there.  The inn should have been prepared to turn us away but instead chose to fall terribly short on their promise.  Instead of more raving fans, they created raving detractors.  We certainly won’t recommend this place and will avoid it on any future visit.

I think the lesson has direct applicability to the service business and yes we sometimes take on work or make commitments for which we have a low likelihood of fulfilling.  Usually the commitments come with the best of intentions and are often made in the heat of the moment.  Sometimes we think we are doing it simply because we don’t want to let the customer down.  Regardless of the intentions, whenever we make promises we can’t keep, it ends in the same result.  Disappointed customers and possibly raving detractors.

I’d love your feedback on this. And as always, please feel free to leave a link back to your own blog if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site. If you are reading this blog post via email, you will need to locate this post on my website by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the comment section.

Jim

“Life is like photography, we develop from the negatives.”

-Unknown

The post Don’t Make Promises you Can’t Keep – Especially in Business appeared first on jimbaston.com.