SERVICE BEYOND THE SMILE

I am so guilty.  For many years I have preached that we must hire the smile, you know the people with the best attitudes.  My position was and still is, that we can teach skills but we will not improve a poor attitude.  In a service economy such as ours, we must be about the experience, the added-value, the fun.  I am still all about hiring and working with only people with great attitudes and built-in smiles but, it is time to move service to a new position on the priority program.  It is time to connect the service team, to work as one unit.

Creating a great service story does require people who know how to delivery a consistent product.  It also requires a group of people who will work as a team, who will be all in for the team and the customer.  From management, it means that when team service excels: recognition and rewards should be part of the program.  People must know why they are to work as a unit and then be rewarded when they execute the buy-in.  It is easy to write down service values, but so very hard to build a memorable set of team values that will be part of the daily day of golf.

Today, this post is about 5 thoughts which may help you and your staff create team service standards that will drive loyalty, added sales, and great word of mouth.  It seems we read stories daily about how to deliver memorable service, yet many of us realize only poor service in our own lives.  Building a team that wants to work together to deliver on a business promise, is possible.  Putting all of the pieces into place, now that is the not so easy step in the plan.  It takes your dedication and patience to make it happen.  You can do it.

5 THOUGHTS FOR IMPROVED SERVICE EXECUTION

1. It is important to have a staff that can become a unit, a solid team.  All must put we in front of me
2. Put the plan in writing.  The team hired to execute the plan should have a stake in creating the plan.  Make sure the team knows the plan can be tweaked as needed in order to build improvement
3. In any new plan, it takes more than training……it takes reminding all how consistency must be the daily mission.  Reminding is an essential part of long term service quality.  People will fall back into poor habits, so observation and coaching is what you sign up for when working to create excellence
4. The best service teams support each other.  They will never blame other team members for a mistake.  Look, things go sideways now and then.  It is to be expected.  Coach through these issues as part of the training.  Mistakes happen but with the right strategy, can be minimized.  Build potential problem situations into your role playing so your team is poised to handle these issues by working together in practice.  Consistency is about no surprises.
5. Managers should observe, coach, measure, recognize, and reward.  That is your position on the team.  A great service program allows team members to make decisions, to create solutions which will be common sense in any strong team.  The poor service strategy always throws a problem up the hill.  Have faith in your system and team.  Allow your people the space to build relationships with the customer by working through an issue.  During team meetings these situations can be reviewed to maximum recovery down the line.  A strong service team will not need a rule book in order to drive a better business.  They need your confidence, your support, and your approval.  Allow people to shine and they will.  Strong service recoveries create the deepest customer loyalty.

To summarize: begin with the best available people and end with recognition and rewards.  As the plan moves to a consistent execution, you will be the one wearing the large smile!

Jack is a speaker and teacher on all things retail and player development.  He can help your business in several ways.  You can reach Jack at highfives81@yahoo.com or at 407-973-6136.