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CMCEF Webinar Series – Part 3 Maintaining the Service Experience

CMCEF LOGO The next and final webinar in the CMCEF Webinar Series is called Maintaining the Service Experience and will take place on Tuesday, February 26th, 2013.   On February 12th, 2013, I presented the second webinar in the Transforming the Service Experience series hosted by the Canadian Mechanical Contractors Education Foundation.  The Webinar was called Creating the Service Experience. In the webinar, we considered the five key hurdles to successfully engaging our technicians in activities to transform the service experience resulting in more revenues and higher customer satisfaction and retention.  The hurdles that can prevent our technicians from doing what we would like them to do are:

  1. Knowledge:  We must clearly define our expectations of what we want our technicians to do.  Often we assume that our technicians know what is expected and overlook the importance of this step.
  2. Skills:  We must ensure that our technicians have the skills to act in the manner we ask of them.  Engaging in proactive discussions with customers may be uncomfortable for some of our technicians and they may lack the skills to do so effectively.
  3. Perception:  We must ensure that our technicians understand why we ask them to act as we do.  Speaking to customers about our services and capabilities may be perceived as a sales task by our technicians.  They need to understand that helping our customers operate their facilities more effectively is a service, not a sale.
  4. Tools and processes:  We must make certain that the technicians have the tools and are supported by our processes to do what we want them to.  When our processes do not support our technician’s efforts, they will perceive that what we are asking is not that important and quickly lose heart.
  5. Motivation:  To get our technicians to enthusiastically embrace a proactive service approach, they must want to do it.  Otherwise, at best they will simply go through the motions or, at worst, not act in the manner we would like them to at all.

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Transform the Service Experience through Assurance

customer service assurance In the last blog post, we discussed transforming the service experience through reliability. Let us now consider what we can do to transform the service experience by creating the feeling of assurance in our customer’s mind.  That is, helping them, as they reflect on our service, say to themselves “That’s why I do business with you!”

As we know, the name RATER[1] is an acronym with each letter representing the first letter of one of the five key dimensions of service quality.  They are:

Reliability: Our ability to provide what is promised, dependably and accurately

Assurance: Our knowledge and courtesy, and our ability to convey trust and confidence

Tangibles: Our physical facilities and equipment, and our appearance

Empathy: The degree of caring and individual attention we provide to customers

Responsiveness: Our willingness to help customers and provide prompt service

To help our customers experience each of these dimensions when working with us, we need to ensure that our employees act in ways that allow our customers to experience these dimensions.  Today we will look at creating Assurance for the customer.

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Creating the Service Experience Part 2 – CMCEF Webinar Series

CMCEF LOGO I am pleased to share information about the next webinar in the CMCEF Webinar Series  Transforming the Service Experience called Creating the Service Experience which will take place Tuesday, February 12th, 2013.   This webinar will examine the challenges of transforming the service experience and discuss how these challenges can be addressed to ensure success.  At the end of this seminar, participants will understand the challenges they will likely have to confront when transforming their own service experience and can use this information to create a plan to address them within their own firms. I hope you can attend!

This follows the first in the webinar series that took place on Tuesday, January 29th, 2013, where I presented on Defining the Service Experience.  We focused on the five key steps that technicians can take to transform the service experience that you create for your customers.  The five key steps our technicians can take are:

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Transform the Service Experience through Reliability

Transforming the Service ExperienceIn a previous blog post, Transforming the Service Experience – 5 Dimensions of Service Quality, we introduced the RATER Model[1] of customer service as a tool to help us transform the service experience into one that is valued by our customers and creates a sustainable competitive advantage.  The model represents the five key dimensions of service quality and provides service providers with a template for defining and creating their unique and valued service experience.  Today we will consider how a service company can define the dimension “Reliability”.

As you may recall, the name RATER is an acronym with each letter representing the first letter of one of the five dimensions.  They are:

R eliability: Our ability to provide what is promised, dependably and accurately,

A ssurance: Our knowledge and courtesy, and our ability to convey trust and confidence,

T angibles:  Our physical facilities and equipment, and our appearance,

E mpathy:  The degree of caring and individual attention we provide to customers,

R esponsiveness:  Our willingness to help customers and provide prompt service.

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CMCEF Webinar Series

CMCEF LOGO I am delighted to let you know about a webinar series that I am presenting in conjunction with the Canadian Mechanical Contractors Education Foundation (CMCEF) that I thought would be of interest to you.  The series is called Transforming the Service Experience.  The webinars are intended to help service companies in today’s highly competitive service environment create a highly valued service experience that distinguishes them from their competitors through the activities of their field service team.

The Transforming the Service Experience Series is comprised of three webinars as follows:

Tuesday, January 29th: Defining the Service Experience

Tuesday, February 12th: Creating the Service Experience

Tuesday, February 26th: Maintaining the Service Experience

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Transforming the Service Experience – 5 Dimensions of Service Quality

Jim Baston - customer service expertIf you want to transform the service experience you create for your customers to one that is valued and enables you to stand out from your competitors, then this will be of interest to you.  In this blog we are going to look at the 5 dimensions of service quality and examine how you can use them to define exactly the service experience you want to deliver.

In 1990, professors from Texas A&M University identified the dimensions of exceptional customer service in their book Delivering Quality Service[1]. They found that there were critical dimensions that defined service quality and from their work emerged a customer service model called RATER, which focused on five. Their research indicated that a service firm that can deliver on all five dimensions contained in the model can create an exceptional service experience.

The name RATER is an acronym with each letter representing the first letter of one of the five dimensions.  They are:

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Increase Revenues Generated by Your Service Techs

Do you want to increase Revenues Generated by your Techs?  Tell them to Stop Selling (and Start Serving)!

Our field service technicians represent a huge opportunity to generate revenues. They have a special relationship with our customers based on a high level of trust. Through that relationship, they have gained a unique understanding of our customers’ goals. They have a practical understanding of the latest in technology and they know our company’s capabilities. Who better than them to recognize and explore opportunities for your company to add more value through more services?

Despite this truth, we have found that most service firms are not fully capitalizing on the unique relationships that their service people have. This is unfortunate for both the service firm and the customer. When we do not fully leverage the special relationships that our service technicians have, we are missing a tremendous opportunity to grow our business, reduce competition and increase customer satisfaction levels. But there is more to it than that. The customer is being denied the opportunity to run their plant or facility better. The customer is not benefiting fully from the knowledge and expertise of our service technicians.

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Stop Maintaining Your Mechanical/Electrical Equipment

Imagine opening up a reputable trade magazine and reading an article that states that you should stop maintaining your mechanical and electrical equipment.  You read the following:

Engineers have just discovered that maintenance of mechanical and electrical equipment is not needed to keep equipment running at peak performance.  “You’ll get better performance by ignoring the equipment altogether.  The equipment will run better and you will save money on not having to pay those service bills!”  This is great news for building owners and process managers.  They can now take a hands-off approach and while getting excellent performance from their equipment.

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Transforming Your Customer’s Service Experience

customer service expertWelcome to my new Baston’s Blog – Transforming the Service Experience!   Baston’s blog is a regular resource of ideas, tools and strategies to help you transform the service experience you are providing to your customers and reap the resulting rewards – rewards that include higher revenues and profitability and increased customer satisfaction and retention.

Thank you for signing up.  I understand that your time is precious and that there are lots of blogs out there to choose from.  My goal, therefore, is to make this a valuable and entertaining resource that you will look forward to receiving and hopefully pass on to your friends and colleagues.  Your input will help me keep on track and relevant to the challenges that you are facing at the moment. You will find the signup for the blog in the side widget to the right. Please make sure you follow the instructions carefully to ensure you receive your posts in your inbox.

I hope you find this blog of value and I look forward to your comments. Don’t forget to leave a link back to your own blog if you have one, via the commentluv feature you’ll find in the comment section.

Beyond GREAT SERVICE – The Technician’s Role in Proactive Business Growth

 “The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important – and then get out of their way while they do it.”

– Jack Welch

I wrote a book this year called Beyond GREAT SERVICE.  It is written as a fictional account about Charlie, a service manager, as he discovers the secret of successfully engaging technicians in conversations with their customers – a conversation that transforms the service experience and results in increased revenues and customer satisfaction.  Many people have asked me why I have written the book and, to answer that, I will need to take a small step back.

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