Guest Blog: Why We Need Customer Service Leadership

This week on our Friends on Friday guest blog post my colleague, John Smart shares his insights on the importance of leadership as part of customer service. I believe that it’s the leadership that creates the customer service culture and manages the vision of the organization. – Shep Hyken

We tend to focus on customer service delivery and ensuring that we have got this right. This is quite understandable, as we know customers will walk if they do not receive the right service.

You can have the best systems and processes in the world which can be copied or bought by your competitors. What really makes the difference is the people – and one of the key differentiators is leadership or how they are led.

What does it mean to be a leader? This is one question that has academics in turmoil as over the generations there have been many theories, ideas and concepts put forward, each with their own merit, but with none actually hitting the mark. These theories range from behavioral, situational, and trait – to name a few.

Having studied and delivered many leadership programs, I believe that a leader will concentrate on three basic areas:

Vision, Engagement and Delivery – or what I call the V.E.D. Principle

• Vision: A leader will look forward, see the positive in obstacles and plan for the future.
• Engagement: Leaders are able to use their interpersonal skills to engage, communicate and influence people to get people on board.
• Delivery: Leaders have the motivation, will or influence to achieve what they set out to do.

When we contrast this to “management,” we can see that management (and the literature around this) aligns with more of a process driven approach including planning, organizing, monitoring and reviewing.

Simplistically, leadership can be seen as the “what” and management as the “how.”

In addition, leadership is also not just confined to the higher echelons of a business (as some people naturally assume) it should be a “golden thread” running through the whole organization at all levels.

Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, was once purported to have entered a board meeting and said: “Don’t manage – lead!” then walked out. His message was clear – good leadership would deliver what was needed.

What does this have to do with customer service, and more importantly when you are responsible for a customer service team or department? Everything.

The person supervising the customer service team needs to demonstrate as much leadership ability as the CEO of the organization. One of the main differences may be the scale and context of their vision.

Adding leadership to customer service adds a whole new value to the experience. Instead of just applying a process management driven approach, try re-aligning the service to a leadership approach.

For example, which sounds better to the team:

Customer Service Manager: ‘We need to achieve a 100% satisfaction rate in the next quarter. This will be achieved by cutting down response times and focusing on the top priorities first.”

Or

Customer Service Leader: “Team, we aim to be the best of the best in the business. There is a National Award next month. To get this we need to achieve 100% satisfaction rate. This will take some work, but I believe that we can, with some effort, get this award and prove our success. To achieve this we need to …..”

The first example demonstrates a typical process, objective driven management style. In the second, the leader has highlighted the vision, and the goal, and engaged the team as they now understand the reason for the extra work, which helps motivate the team to go forward and achieve the deliverable.

The examples given are very simplistic, but they try to demonstrate the difference between a management and a leadership approach. It is only one of many examples of customer leadership, and is only scratching the surface.

The key message for those of you who are responsible for customer service teams: It is great leadership that really makes the difference.

John Smart is a development consultant, running his own consultancy. He has held senior management positions gained in Consultancy, SMEs and FTSE 100 companies, within a diverse array of industries. He is the author of PROUD – Achieving Customer Service Excellence.

For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com.

Read Shep’s latest Forbes Article:  10 Reasons Organizations Fail To Deliver Great Customer Service