SOCAPiE Model

Too often, businesses espouse the service philosophy but then reward only for sales. Organisations need to include service in Reward packages. Clearly, this cannot be done overnight as the service measurement data needs to be robust before we can pay people on it.

However, a plan should be developed on the optimum way of implementing such a policy.Meantime, other methods of recognition should be investigated such as:

Management Information is what turns service from something that just happens into something that is manageable and managed. It needs to be provided in a clear, concise, simple and actionable format which turns measurement into an actionable tool. It also needs to be sufficiently detailed to identify where issues need to be addressed. In addition, organisations need to benchmark themselves against other sectors as that mirrors the experience of customers who compare against all the other service providers they deal with.

Service Standards need to be agreed for all of the factors known to be important to customers. That information is obtained from:

• service priorities research
• other customer research

In general, Service Standards need to be about:

• Appearance
• Timeliness
• Behaviour (the visible manifestation of Attitude)

There is no point in having a Service Standard if its achievement still doesn’t meet customer needs and this is especially the case when considering Timeliness Service Standards.

Human nature often means that we focus on those elements that are easiest to accomplish but, in the context of service excellence, that is a recipe for mediocrity. Consequently, we must know what is important to customers so that we can focus on those issues.

The type of support that’s necessary is very much driven by the Management Information but will undoubtedly consist of these elements:
 
People development
World-class Service is delivered by world-class people who are motivated to add value to their customers. It goes without saying that the culture within the organisation needs to be customer-focused from directors to front line staff and each member of staff needs to know and understand what is expected of them.
 

To be successful, each of the strategic segments below needs to be addressed and the organisation needs to be able to articulate its intentions for each segment so that staff fully understand and buy in.