HR staff listen up: There is a correlation between how a company treats its employees and the quality of service provided to its customers.
People resources are a source of sustainable competitive advantage for companies in the customer-service industry. By effectively managing service staff to deliver quality service, while interacting with customers in a shared environment, employers can nurture the type of customer-service behaviour that is essential to the company’s success. This core competence is achieved through a combination of elements which builds up the employer-employee relationship.
Researchers have found significant relationships between service employees’ perceptions of their company’s HR practices and customers’ attitudes about the service received. When service employees describe the HRM practices in their work environment in positive terms, customers also report they receive superior service. When employees perceive their organisation as one that has sound HRM functions and activities such as recruitment and selection, training and development and rewards, they are then enabled to do the firm’s main work of serving customers.
An examination of good HRM practices in companies with good customer service includes:
Recruitment and selection criteria: The starting point for providing quality service is the quality of staff to deliver that service. The recruitment objectives are selecting staff with the required attitudinal and behavioural characteristics for good customer service. Many organisations are looking beyond the “what” – technical qualifications – of applicants to assess their service orientation. The “how” – functional quality – is an important facet of the perceived service. Service employees need competencies of “how” to deliver quality service (skills and knowledge necessary to do the job) and service inclination (their interest in doing service-related work, which is reflected in their attitudes toward service and orientation to serving customers).
An ideal recruitment process for service employees assesses both service competencies and service inclination, resulting in hiring employees that are high on both dimensions. Hiring approaches include observing behaviour, conducting personality tests, interviewing applicants and providing potential service employees with a realistic job preview.
Training: In order to provide quality service, it takes more than just having the right people in the right jobs. They must also be trained to deal with customers, satisfy their needs and expectations. Service employees must have strong interpersonal skills to deal with customers on a daily basis and have a good knowledge of the product or service they are offering. During the customer-frontline staff encounter, the employee behavioural performance is often the service. Service employees need specific training in interpersonal, technical and functional skills.
These training objectives are important in service provision settings because of the active role of service employees in satisfying customers.
Rewards for customer service excellence: Having appropriate reward policies in place is important in inducing employees to deliver quality service. Employees want recognition and a share in the benefits that result from their efforts. For example, if customer satisfaction and retention are viewed as important outcomes, service behaviours that increase those outcomes need to be recognised and rewarded.
Dealing with angry customers is a thankless task and employees who perform the task well should be recognised and rewarded. If disaster recovery efforts go unrewarded, they will not perform effectively in future and customer satisfaction and retention will suffer as a result.
Supervisory support: It is critical for service employees to be well supported by their supervisors, fellow team members and other departments in the organisation. Even if the employees know what to do, they may not be able to execute tasks because supervisors have not provided the necessary support. If the employee perceives that his or her supervisor shows concern for employees and provides support in general, this will lead to a positive appraisal of the environment and an increase in job satisfaction.
Team support from co-workers: Excellent service generally occurs as the result of the actions of a group of people working together. Although it is the frontline staff, who ultimately deliver the service to the customer, they need the full support of those in the backroom in order for the service encounter to run smoothly. The customer often sees only a small part of the service delivery process (for example, an airline service).
Although not every member of the firm deals directly with the end-customer, each job is important in ensuring quality service being delivered to the customer.
Internal marketing theorists have argued that it is impossible for businesses to provide better service to external customers than they provide to their employees or internal customers.
Employees who feel supported and who have a team backing them up will be better able to maintain their enthusiasm and provide quality service.
Motivated customer service-orientated employees are difficult for other organisations to imitate. Companies that wish to improve their customer-service delivery should always emphasise on both developing employees and ensuring the work environment is conducive for them to attain the best service standards.
