Mr. Boles

Guest Service / Customer Experience Mgmt

Defining Your Service Culture

By Jesse Boles, Executive Director of Operations, FreemanGroup

When companies decide to institute a service culture, they usually do so out of a desire to achieve the same kind of success they see being achieved by other companies with strong, clearly defined service cultures. They recognize that in an increasingly global marketplace, having a well-defined service culture will make them more competitive and help them achieve their long-term objectives.

What companies don’t always recognize right away is that, for better or worse, they already have a service culture. The challenges they will face as they go about instituting a service culture will have less to do with establishing a new culture, and more to do with changing their current culture into one that more strongly supports their company’s strategic and financial goals.

First Steps

To establish your desired service culture, you must first determine what you like and don’t like about your current culture. By asking and answering five relatively simple questions, you can begin to expose the elements of your current service culture that are not working for you, uncover underlying issues which may need to be addressed, and better conceptualize your company’s overall ambitions.

1. What behaviors are preventing our organization from achieving its strategic goals?
2. What/who is driving these behaviors?
3. What required behaviors are missing from our organization?
4. What incentives will motivate team members to demonstrate these behaviors?
5. How do we need to think about ourselves and our jobs in order to succeed?

Throughout the development of your culture-based initiative, something to keep in mind is that any culture-related messages you send to your team should help create an environment that promotes open communication.

According to a recent article by Christine Campbell in Forbes, a survey by Accept Corporation and AIPMM found that “40% of companies aren’t effective at sharing and collaborating on ideas,” even though their customer service staffs work to fulfill their customers’ needs every day, and are often keenly aware of what works and what doesn’t. The survey also found that “less than 50% of product ideas come from customers, partners, or suppliers,” and that “50% of new products fail.”

To avoid the often costly missteps that can occur due to a lack of dialog, your organization’s service culture should be created through collaboration and honest discourse. One way to open the lines of communication is by holding a facilitated strategic session for leadership, ideally, off site. The combination of an impartial facilitator and separation from the work environment can help participants to speak freely.

Vision, Mission, & Values

Three things that will help define your company’s core values are your company’s vision, mission, and values statements. These are statements that everyone from the heads of your organization to ground-level employees will be expected to follow. They should be developed with your guests in mind, but directed towards your team. Statements that speak to employees on a personal level will bridge the gap between having staff members who simply abide by standards and practices and having staff members who are truly engaged throughout their day-to-day interactions and daily routines.

Below are some tips to effectively defining your company’s vision, mission, and values.

• Your Vision - To define your company’s vision, ask: What is it that we want to achieve? What should the world look like if we are successful? Your vision statement should reflect your big picture goals.
  
  One example of a good vision statement is the following statement from Ford: “To become the world’s leading consumer company for automotive products and services.” Any team member could easily determine how their work is or is not in alignment with this statement. It is clear, memorable, motivational, and something that could be used as a powerful tool to rally the troops.

• Your Mission - To define your company’s mission, ask: Why do we exist? What is it that we ultimately provide to our customers? Your mission statement should be tailored to suit your team in much the same way that a marketing slogan is tailored to target a specific type of customer or key demographic.
  
  An example of a good mission statement is Nike’s “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.” This statement clearly communicates the purpose of the Nike organization and its members. Your job may be to complete the tasks required of a retail sales associate, but your purpose is “to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.” A good mission statement gives meaning and depth to simple tasks.

• Your Values - To define your company values, ask: What type of environment will support our mission? What kinds of things would be important to an organization with the vision and mission statements we have created? Your company values should dictate behaviors in much the same way personal values dictate the ways we behave as members of a family or citizens in a community.
  
  Examples of good organizational values might be: creativity, integrity, diversity, and accountability. Company values generally take the form of a collection of key words or series of statements. They should clearly prohibit certain behaviors, and enforce the idea that if certain behaviors do take place, corrective measures will be taken. (Deviations from values are often dubbed “values violations.”)

Training Tips

Successfully communicating your vision, mission, and values will allow you to help your team to make the kinds of decisions that lead to success without having to micromanage your operations. Here are some tips for implementing a culture-based training program:

• Ensure all existing and incoming staff members know your vision, mission, and values, and what they mean.
• Explain and communicate management decisions in terms of your vision, mission, and values.
• When helping team members make decisions, use your vision, mission, and values statements to provide direction and guide outcomes.
• Hold team members accountable to your vision, mission and values. Values violations must have consequences.
• Integrate your mission, vision, and values into your recognition programs. This will demonstrate that success within your organization is dependent upon acting in accordance with your established standards.

Measure Your Success

Once your culture has been agreed upon and implemented, you will need to measure the effectiveness of your efforts in order to ensure ongoing success. Three critical questions that you can answer through guest surveys, employee surveys, and mystery shopping are:

1. Are the members of our team motivated by our overall message, and do they see it as universally applicable throughout our organization?
2. Are the members of our team demonstrating the desired behaviors?
3. Are our customers happier and spending more as a result of our culture?

If you gather the data that answers these questions and find that the answers are in the affirmative, congratulations! You have implemented a successful service culture. If your employees are satisfied, but you are not getting the desired behaviors, you will likely need to revise your training approach. If the behaviors are present, but the employees are dissatisfied, it is likely that the training is effective, but the message is not resonating with your team or is not being demonstrated by leadership. If the answers to questions one and two are in the affirmative, but the customers are dissatisfied, your culture will need to be reevaluated and realigned with customer desires.

The key to successfully designing and implementing a service culture is taking the time to carefully review your operations and address those actions or items that may not be in alignment with your core beliefs from the onset. Often, organizations will present their teams with lofty vision, mission, and values statements, but fall short when it comes to practicing what they preach. In order for your statements to reach people on a personal level, they will have to be reflected in the management of your operations from top to bottom. The last thing you want is for your core values to be thought of by your team as nice sentiments that hang on a training room wall. By aligning your operations with your values from the beginning, you will have a much greater chance of seeing them permeate every aspect of your business and make a real impact company-wide.

Jesse Boles joined FreemanGroup in 2007, and assumed the role of Executive Director of Operations in November 2008. He is currently responsible for FreemanGroup’s training and measurement divisions, heading projects in conjunction with some of the hospitality industry’s leading service providers. Mr. Boles has worked with leadership teams to develop brand service cultures at both existing and new properties for Las Vegas casinos and luxury hotels. He has been integral in the set up and execution of brand-specific measurement programs for Wyndham Hotel Group, Hard Rock International, Delaware North Companies, and MGM Resorts International. Mr. Boles can be contacted at 972-479-1345 or jboles@freemangroup.org Extended Bio...

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