Customer Service Initiatives and Executive Impatience
A reader recently posted a comment on this blog that said her organization implemented a customer service initiative about a year ago and the executive team was getting anxious for results. Her question was; how long does it take before a company will see the results of a service initiative?
Usually a company sees some quick wins early in the initiative as employees are trained on the service principles and possibly implement things right away. True change in a large company (hers is a Fortune 400 company) however, takes 3-5 years. Changing a company’s culture is no small feat – there are lots of things that have to be put in place and these take time. There are certainly benefits along the way, but real results show up in that 3-5 year time frame (a bit less in a smaller company).
I know such a time frame seems daunting. And that’s the reason so many companies jump from one customer service initiative to another. They’re impatient for big results. But what happens is that the components of the initiative don’t get time to get any traction and it feels like the initiative isn’t working. So, management looks for the next flavor-of-the-month service program.
Employees are smart. They soon learn that each subsequent initiative will go away if they just wait it out. They’ll sit in the training sessions smiling to themselves knowing that “this too shall pass.”
A well-planned, well-executed service initiative will ultimately have a positive impact. It doesn’t matter if it’s my approach or some other. The key is to stay with it, adjust as you go along, and be relentless. Don’t let impatience get the best of you and send you on a search for the next big thing.
Feel free to download and share an article I wrote titled, “Sustaining a Customer Service Initiative: the Need For Long-Term Commitment.” The article may help to create support for sticking with the strategy.
I’d love to hear your comments about this important issue!
As a bank that had Dennis come in to help us create and launch a customer service initiative, I wholeheartedly agree with this commentary. We had tried things in the past, and when I saw Dennis speak at a conference, I knew he could help reinforce with our ownership that it can’t be a “wam-bam, here is what you have to do” effort.
We are in year 3 of our initiative and because we went over the top in making sure that our program stayed in the forefront, including publishing our “Promise” to our customers in various and permanent ways, it took maybe 18 months to have it be firmly ingrained in our culture and our hiring.
Our initiative is cemented into how we do business, and we keep working to keep it fresh so that all our hard work doesn’t fall by the wayside.
As I said, it took us about 18 months for complete “enculturation” – we are a $900 million community bank. For a large bank, I can see a 3 year period as being realistic and reasonable.