The six principles of service excellence
Creating a culture of service, performance and operational excellence does not happen by chance. A robust and systematic process, implemented across the organization, is needed to create sustainable change.
During my 17-year career at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, I had the opportunity to see firsthand how creating a clear and simple service culture and holding everyone accountable for embracing it could create long-term global recognition and success. After leaving The Ritz-Carlton, I set out to study other world-class organizations in hospitality, retail, manufacturing, and healthcare. In doing so, I discovered that there were many other organizations that were also enjoying sustainable success and recognition for driving excellence through employee engagement, customer loyalty, and ultimately profit dominance. During six months of benchmarking and in-depth research, I found six common principles that all of these organizations shared and that have been attributed to their long-term success.
Thus, I created the customer service business model popularly known as The Six Principles of Service Excellence.
* Principle 1 – Vision and Mission – World-class organizations that are able to create and sustain a culture of service excellence have a strong vision and mission that all employees know, own and energize. In such cases, your vision statements clarify what you aspire to be in the future; while their mission statements articulate their purpose, what they stand for.
* Principle 2: Business Goals: World-class organizations that can create and sustain a culture of service excellence have clear, simple, measurable organizational goals and objectives that are known to all employees. They don’t confuse employees with a multitude of goals, instead they select 3-4 that employees not only know about, but also understand how the work they do contributes to their successful achievement. Along with goals that focus on growth and profitability, world-class organizations also have service-oriented goals that focus on customer loyalty, employee engagement, and some form of quality improvement.
* Principle 3 – Service Standards: The purpose of service standards is to make it clear to employees exactly what actions and behaviors are expected of them to drive excellence every day and build customer loyalty. World-class organizations that can create and sustain a culture of service excellence create and regularly communicate the standards of excellence (key touch points) that are necessary to realize their vision, mission, and business objectives. They do not leave this to chance.
* Principle 4: Intervention and Learning Strategy: Just as they have a solid strategy in place to ensure financial success, world-class organizations have systems and processes in place to ensure their service philosophy (vision, mission, business objectives, and service standards ) is woven into all aspects of organizational culture. When it comes to employee recruitment and selection, new employee orientation, training and development, performance management, reward and recognition, incentive programs, etc., the philosophy of service is built in every step of the way.
* Principle 5 – Organizational Alignment – World-class organizations that are able to create and maintain a culture of service excellence use all communication resources within their sphere of influence to constantly reinforce their service philosophy. They hold leaders accountable for regularly discussing the organization’s vision, mission, business goals, and service standards during daily pre-shift meetings, as well as monthly or quarterly departmental meetings (which are required, not optional). ). Other communication resources used to align staff include posters, tent cards, and wallet cards that display the philosophy of the service. Additionally, they communicate and reinforce this information through employee newsletters, bulletin boards, and email slogans. Most importantly, senior executives are also responsible for discussing the relevance of the service philosophy at every opportunity they have to interact with employees.
* Principle 6 – Leadership Measurement and Accountability – In the final analysis, what gets measured gets done. World-class organizations that can drive excellence use simple dashboards to help employees track the organization’s success or failure in driving excellence. Measurement is what helps establish credibility in the process, by helping senior leaders determine the strengths and weaknesses of the system, and more effectively holding middle managers accountable for driving excellence every day.
Creating a culture of service excellence is a journey, not a destination. Honestly, there are no shortcuts or quick fixes. To achieve this, leadership must be 100% committed to applying a comprehensive and long-term approach to ensure sustainability.
In a nutshell, the six principles of service excellence are more than just a business model. It’s a proven strategy for driving world-class employee performance and elevating the customer experience from average to extraordinary. And if followed implicitly, it will lead any organization (large or small) to achieve and maintain a work environment that fosters superior employee performance and service excellence.