World-class service providers have a model of excellence that starts with setting explicit standards to make sure everyone understands what fantastic customer service looks like, said Mike Dalloz, managing director, Performance In People (PIP).

“If you haven’t been absolutely explicit about the kind of service standards you expect your teams and individuals to deliver, how can you expect them to deliver it?”

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The customer service specialist advised dealers to map out those standards, aligned to customers’ requirements, maximising commerciality, and make sure it is deliverable.

Having trained staff to understand them, coaching is needed to ensure the training is not lost and to achieve consistency.

“Training is about new knowledge, new skills, new behaviours. The way we sustain it is through really strong, memorable coaching that’s about reinforcing existing skills and existing knowledge.”

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PIP uses self-evaluation to review performance: “When you get somebody to look at their own performance, you learn a lot about them.

“If they have delivered an experience which isn’t in line with your explicit standards, you want them to identify where they can improve.

“If they think it’s actually pretty good, you have a training issue.”

He said a weakness of mystery shops is that they measure what is expected, but not how it is done. Mystery shops can now get people to evaluate behavioural performance, including friendliness, enthusiasm, professionalism, interest in the customer, attentiveness and helpfulness.

Dalloz said some of his clients are forgetting process to focus on behavioural performance, which showed that improvement in behavioural measurement scores had a direct impact on improvement in customer satisfaction measurement, he said.