Communicate and Model Your Expectations for Service Excellence

Lana J. Chandler
October 10, 2011 | COMMENTS

“Of all the things I’ve done, the most vital is coordinating the talents of those who work for us and pointing them toward a certain goal.”   —Walt Disney

“Financial institutions have a somewhat unique opportunity to connect with clients on a relationship basis versus a transactional basis,” observes Donna Thaxter, co-founder of PeopleSmart High Impact Training and Consulting in Boston. “Clients actually expect more in a banking environment than they would in a typical retail environment. We have to rise to the occasion in each and every interaction in order to protect that relationship.”

Leaders need to take every opportunity to communicate and model the expectations for service excellence. There is no such thing as over-communicating the service vision! Take a multi-pronged approach when communicating your expectations for service excellence, advises Thaxter. She offers these examples:

• Ongoing recognition programs that highlight and describe the desired level of service the organization is striving for. Remember to recognize internal and external service examples.

• Internal newsletters with tips and examples of best practices (if you have an intranet, maximize its utility by using it to promote service excellence expectations, tips, and success stories).

• Make sure that service excellence is on every institution-wide department or branch meeting.

• Leaders across an organization that understand the importance of modeling service excellence with their internal and external clients.

• Job descriptions and annual performance evaluations that emphasize service excellence and building clients for life.

• Measurement of client relationships and communication of trends; for example, average client life span is 22 years and average client presently has 4.7 products/services.

• Organizational goals that emphasize incremental improvements in client relationship measurements; for example, “We would like to see our average products and services per client increase to 5 by December 2011.”

• Action plan development that serves to support the success of the achievement of client relationship goals; examples might be “We will contact each client that closes an account/relationship to determine the reason and identify opportunities to save the relationship” or “We will contact every new client three times in the first 90 days of the relationship to assess their satisfaction with their account(s) and to identify other products that may benefit them.”

This story appeared in Branch Manager’s Letter at www.branchmanagersletter.com and is reprinted with permission. Contact publisher Lana J. Chandler at 304-343-0206 or Lana@BranchManagersLetter.com.