Chapter 1-Leadership Retail

Putting leadership at the heart of the service experience
Customer Service
Toolkit for Retail
Chapter One: Leadership

Leadership at the heart of the service experience
Copyright of SPRING Singapore 2010 0|Page

Chapter One: Leadership
Leadership at the heart of the service experience
1. Why is leadership important?

1.1 Purpose
1.2 Benefits
2. Putting leadership at the heart of the service experience

2.1 Customer satisfaction versus customer service
2.2 Importance of leadership
2.3 Develop customer service mission and goals
2.4 Establish customer service values
2.5 Establish strategies and key performance indicators
2.6 Update customer service goals
2.7 Set up a service quality team
3 What else can I do?

1. Why is leadership important?
1.1 Purpose
Customer satisfaction requires direction and motivation from the leadership. The
definition of what customer satisfaction is in the context of your organisation must be
clearly defined and understood throughout. This must be cascaded from the top
down, and built into systems and processes from the front-end to the back-end. This
requires establishing a mission to define what delivering service excellence means,
and to shape the strategies to work towards this common goal.
1.2 Benefits
When the leader or management of an organisation creates a clear and common

goal for all, he brings about a higher level of productivity. Employees who know what
they are committed to are more likely to provide better service, and generate greater
customer satisfaction.

2. Putting leadership at the heart of the service experience
2.1 Customer satisfaction versus customer service
Customer satisfaction and customer service are related, but they are not the same.
Customer satisfaction is how your customers feel after interacting with you or your
products, and is affected by a variety of factors which all contribute to the customer
experience as a whole.
Customer Service
How your staff serves
your customer, e.g.,

Product Efficiency of customer
Does your product meet the friendliness, attentiveness delivery processes
quality expectations of your Accurate and efficient service,
customer? to customers needs e.g., short waiting times at the
cashiers
Factors driving
Customer Satisfaction
Ambience of your outlet Off-site customer
touch points
Environment, layout, The customer-friendliness
and branding of your
decoration, music, smells, website,
e.g., Physical Tangibles internet reviews, e.g.,
does not overpromise in
are the fitting rooms Quality of outlets physical the
photos
private and comfortable? items, e.g., good quality of
clothing
As seen in the diagram, customer service is one of the key components that affect
customer satisfaction. Customer service refers to a specific encounter between your
service employees and customers, i.e., the way your employees serve the
customers. A lack in quality in customer service will affect customer satisfaction. In
the same way, if the other factors that affect customer satisfaction are lacking, levels
of customer satisfaction may also decrease.

2.2 Importance of leadership
Leadership is important because leaders create the structures and systems that
unite and motivate people within the organisation to achieve service excellence.
Leaders perform the following roles:
Create and communicate the service mission and strategy: Leaders frame
and communicate the customer service mission in a way which your staff
understands and inspires the staff to live out the mission and strategy.
Set business goals and programmes: Leaders set the common business goals
that all staff can work towards and measure their progress by.
Recruit talent: Leaders set the human resources strategy and determine the
type of customer service staff who are recruited and the type of customer service
delivered to the customer
Develop people: Leaders develop their people by giving them opportunities to

learn new skills, providing them with challenging assignments and empowering
them to make real decisions. These actions create a motivated and equipped
workforce to deliver better customer service.
Recognise and reward: Leaders set the appropriate performance incentives that
motivate staff to achieve customer satisfaction through better customer service.

2.3 Develop customer service mission and goals
A customer service mission is an organisations promise to its customers about the

kind of experience it will deliver.
Attached below are two examples of customer service missions taken from
companies known for their customer-centricity, Ritz-Carlton and Walt Disney:
Toys R Us
Achieving customer satisfaction by delivering a quality experience for our

customers each time they shop with us
Walt Disney
To make people happy.
The mission should be a realistic, genuine, living statement that is meaningful to

employees of your organisation. It is not a public relations statement promising
excellent service.
A strong customer service mission allows both employees and customers to

visualise and understand the kind of service your organisation wants to provide. It
gives staff a sense of purpose, value and meaning. The customer service mission
statement is a living document. It creates alignment within the whole organisation.
The questions below can guide you as you think about your organisations customer
service mission:
Who are your customers?

What do they want?
What kind of experience do you want to leave them with?

Case Study: Toys R Us customer service mission
Toys R Us aims to deliver a quality experience for our customers each time
they shop with us. We do this by creating a one-stop shopping destination
with a unique and trend-right merchandise mix, friendly and helpful services,
rewards for loyalty, knowledgeable sales associates and offering hot
products, in-stock when parents want them
In their customer service mission, Toys R Us s has outlined:
What kind of experience do you want to leave them with? deliver a quality
experience for our customers.
What do they want? unique and trend-right merchandise mix, friendly and
helpful services, rewards for loyalty, knowledgeable sales associates
When drafting your customer service mission:

You should already have a good understanding of who your customers are,
and what their needs are.1
Involve your key service managers and service employees from the front-end
and back-end in this exercise as they have an intimate understanding of what is
happening on the ground and can provide valuable insights. They will also be
the ones implementing the mission.
Your statement should give direction.
Keep it short and simple so that everyone can understand and remember it.
Use action words such as deliver, provide achieve.
Make your statement inspiring and distinctive from your competitors.
A step-by-step guide to draft your organisations customer service mission can be

found in the following page.
Tool 1.1 Template to create customer service mission
1
More information on identifying customer segments can be found at Chapter Five: Service
Standards Delivering to your customers expectations.

1 Instructions
Step 1 Identify the different types of customers you have by demographic characteristics,
e.g., age, gender.
Step 2 Identify the needs of the different customer categories. This can be done through
your own observation and understanding of their needs or by surveys, focus
groups and interviews with customers. For more information on how to conduct
these activities, please refer to Chapter 4: Customer Relationships Building a
relationship with your customer.
Step 3 Categorise these customer needs into themes and come up with a customer
service mission that covers these themes.
2 General Information
Name of
Organisation:
Industry:
Date:
3 Customer Service Intent

Step 1: Step 2: Step 3:
Who are your What do they want? What experience do you
customers? want to leave them with?
Knowledgeable service staff
A shopping experience with
Youths, teenagers Variety of choice a variety of choices and is
value for money
Value for money
Post-sales service
We will meet the needs of
our customers by providing
Families Product / service information
affordable quality products
and friendly service
Customer support
Variety of choice Our customers will enjoy

the variety of our products
Working adults Knowledgeable service staff with strong service support
throughout their shopping
Customer support experience
Accessibility
We will provide a relaxed
and leisurely shopping
Senior citizens Patient and attentive staff
experience for all our
Highly knowledgeable service customers

staff

Step 4:
Customer service mission proposition
To be the most visited and most fashionable retail outlet in Singapore.

2.4 Establish customer service values
Values help to shape behaviour and act as a set of standards on how the
organisation and staff should operate. A set of clearly articulated values provides
everyone with a common reference point when choosing among competing priorities.
It acts as a guide to show how the various departments and employees should work
together.
Below are some examples of values statements from two organisations known for
their customer-centricity:
Walt Disney
No cynicism.
Nurturing of "wholesome American values".
Creativity, dreams, and imagination.
Fanatical attention to consistency and detail.
Preservation and control of the Disney magic.
Nordstrom
Service to the customer above all else.
Hard work and individual productivity.
Never being satisfied.
Excellence in reputation; being part of something special.
A step-by-step guide to draft your organisations customer service values can be

found in the following page.

Tool 1.2 Identify your customer service values

1 Instructions
Step 1 Draft a values sorter such as the one on the next page.
Step 2 Assemble a team with a variety of employees from senior management, service
managers and selected service employees with a long employment history. Get
the group to rank the top 5 values from this worksheet that should drive the
customer service mission and goals.
Step 3 Rank the top 5 values from the groups inputs. Does the group agree that these
values would serve as your organisations values?
Name of
Organisation:
Industry:
Date:
3 Service Values
Achievement Knowledge
Acknowledgement Leadership
Adventure Learning
Aesthetics Nurturing
Autonomy Participation
Beauty Partnership
Caring Performance
Challenge Play
Change and Variety Precision
Choice Productivity
Communication Relationship
Community Responsibility
Compassion Recognition
Competition Service
Creativity Stability
Empowerment Success
Excellence Tradition
Excitement Trust
Fun Unity
Friendship Vitality
Growth Wealth
Harmony Wholeness
Help Others Wisdom
Integrity Zest
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2.5 Establish strategies and key performance indicators
Now you have your mission which defines what customer service means, and a set
of values to guide action. But to realise this mission, you will need:
An overall strategy to achieve this mission.

Specific action to achieve the strategy.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) that help you track if you have
implemented these strategies well. KPIs are quantifiable measurements that
reflect the goals set by the organisation.
The strategy and action tell your employees what to do. The KPIs tell them how well
they have to perform, or what to aim for.
Get Buy-In:
You will need help to implement these strategies and achieve these key
performance indicators. Involve customer service managers, and training
managers in this exercise.
Using your customer service mission as an anchor, identify what needs to be done to
meet this ideal. This can be done for your whole organisation, or for individual
departments. The customer service mission can be translated into an actionable item
for each employee. He can then see how his work in the organisation contributes to
the overall ideal. The next page shows how you can identify your strategy, actions
needed and KPIs. Try filling in a similar template for your own organisation.

Tool 1.3 Template to develop service strategies and

Key Performance Indicator (KPIs)
1 Instructions
Step 1 Based on the customer service mission, come up with the strategies on how to
operationalise the customer service mission, e.g., if you want to deliver efficient
customer service, one of the strategies would be to resolve customer queries in a
timely fashion.
Step 2 For each strategy, come up with the actions that will enable the strategy to
happen, e.g., to resolve customer queries in a timely fashion, you need to ensure
that relevant processes are implemented to support the timely resolution of
customer queries within two days.
Step 3 For the relevant action, generate the KPIs that helps your company to track and
measure how well you are doing for that particular action and thus how effectively
you are fulfilling your overall customer service mission, e.g., to measure how well
your processes are supporting the timely resolution of customer queries, a key
performance indicator used could be tracking the number of customer queries not
resolved within two days.
Name of
Organisation:
Industry:
Date:
3 Customer Service KPIs

Step 1: (Strategy) Step 2: (Actions) Step 3: (KPI)
What do we want to do or How do we do this? How do we track our
achieve? progress?
Number of staff
Training for sales staff and
Highly knowledgeable sales who have not
periodic spot checks of product
staff attended training
knowledge
Spot check results
Building relationships and Consistent interaction with

Number of events /
activities to
engaging customers customers
engage customers
Service staff adhere to service Mystery audits to monitor and Mystery Audit
SOPs encourage compliance scores

Organisations can use the SMART guidelines to develop KPIs that are:
Simple: Specific and easy to understand.
Measurable: Quantifiable and practical to track
Achievable: Within control of your organisation.
Relevant: Directly relevant to the strategic objectives (e.g., if having satisfied
customers is a customer service goal, measuring the number of customer
compliments is relevant to achieving this objective).
Timely: Measured on a regular basis to drive action (e.g. quarterly or every
half a year).
The next page shows an example of how KPIs can be tracked:

Tool 1.4 Template to track KPIs
1 Instructions
Step 1 Transfer your actions and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) columns from the
&2 Strategy, action and KPI template to the first 2 columns of the KPI tracking
template.
Step 3 Determine a target for this KPI, i.e., the level for which you want to attain for this
particular KPI.
Step 4 Determine how regularly you would like to track this KPI.
Step 5 Assign a person to be responsible for collecting information on this KPI and
updating the status of this KPI on a regular basis, e.g., this person could be
someone who is directly responsible for achieving this KPI.
Step 6 Update the results on a regular basis so that you can track the trend on how well
your company is achieving this particular KPI.
Name of
Organisation:
Industry:
Date:
3 KPI Tracking
Step 1: Step 2: Step 3: Step 4: Step 5: Step 6:
Service Strategy KPIs to track Target Measuremen Overall Target
t frequency in tracking
charge
Eg. Highly Number of staff who

Branch
knowledgeable have yet to attend 0 Monthly Met
Manager
sales staff product training
Not met
Remarks:
Eg .Service New outlet
Mystery Audit Branch not
staff adhere to 75% Quarterly
scores Manager complying
service SOPs
with
service
standard
Eg.
Staff check and Branch
Fashionable 100% Weekly Met
assessment Manager
and well
dressed

2.6 Updating your customer service mission and strategies
Over time, you may need to adapt and update your organisations customer service
strategies.
Stay In Touch:
Your front line employees will have the most contact with customers and may be
the first to anticipate changing needs. Involve them and ask for their feedback in
the process of updating your customer satisfaction strategies, action steps and
KPIs.
It may be necessary to review or update your customer service mission as well if

there are major changes in your customer service goals and strategies. If this is
necessary, use the tool to create customer service goals and mission, introduced
earlier.
The next page illustrates how customer service strategies can be reviewed:

Tool 1.5 Template to review customer service strategies
1 Instructions
Step Do your customers have any changes in needs?
1 Customers may have new needs as time goes by. E.g., people nowadays may
value quick service and a swift retail purchase.
Some needs may have become less important over time. For example, people
may not value soothing music and ambience during their retail experience as
much as before.
Step Has the marketplace/industry changed?
2 Are there any major changes that have impacted the industry as a whole? For
example, online retail is becoming increasingly common
Step Are your competitors doing anything new in terms of service?
3 Competitors may have implemented new services that we must match or do
better than, in order to remain competitive. E.g., traditional retail shops may have
added an online shop facility and do tie-ups with credit card companies to offer
special promotions on their websites.
Step What can we do better?
4 What can your business do to meet these changes and remain relevant and
competitive? For example, move part of your retail business online.
Name of
Organisation:
Industry:
Date:
3 Customer Service Strategies Review

Step 1: Do your customers have any new needs?
Consumer tastes have changed
Customer expectations have changed
Perception of our brand has changed
Additional observations:
Step 2: Has your marketplace / industry changed?

There are new competitors
There have been new policy changes / regulations in place
Additional observations:
Step 3: Are your competitors doing anything new in terms of service?

Discounts/ packages
Style consultants
Valet services
Loyalty programmes
Innovation

4 Customer Service Strategies Review

Step 4: What can we do better?
Enhance our service offerings
Develop our people
Cut costs and transfer those savings to customers
Re-brand ourselves
Step 5: How should we revise our strategy / customer service mission:

2.7 Set up a service quality team
Providing excellent customer service is a team effort. For example, in a retail outlet,
even if your service employees have done a good job serving your customers, if the
payment process is inefficient, the customer experience will be negative, and
customer satisfaction will drop.
Customer-oriented organisations have a dedicated service quality team. This

dedicated team can help the organisation to:
Co-ordinate customer satisfaction initiatives to ensure they are carried out in an

integrated and consistent manner.
Identify opportunities to learn from different departments or outlets in the
organisation.
Demonstrate your serious effort and commitment to improving customer
service.
To set up this team or structure:
Assemble a team from the key divisions responsible for delivering a holistic
customer experience, e.g., HR, training, operations, service managers from the
different outlets.
Nominate a chairperson for this team, which can be a rotated.
This team should meet regularly to discuss customer service-related issues
such as assessing customer feedback. A possible agenda for regular service
quality team meetings can be found in the following page.

Tool 1.6 Sample agenda for the service quality team

meetings
1 Instructions
Step Customer feedback (Compliments and complaints)
1 - Response to compliments and complaints
- Learning points
Step Status update
2 - How are we doing in our KPIs
- Problem areas and follow-up action
- Update on previous follow-up action
Step Recent changes
3 - Changes made in processes, outlets, etc
- Impact on customer service
Name of
Organisation:
Industry:
Date:
3 Sample Meeting Agenda

A service quality team should be appointed within the organisation, and would typically
comprise of senior management personnel, customer service managers and frontline
supervisors who are responsible for driving the customer service strategies and action
plans within the organisation.
A sample meeting agenda for the service quality team is as follow:
Agenda
1. Customer feedback (compliments and complaints)
a. Response to compliments and complaints
b. Learning points
c. Problem areas and follow up action
2. Status update
a. How are we doing in our KPIs
b. Update on previous follow-up action
3. Market updates
a. New products / menus / services
b. Changes made in processes, outlets, etc
c. Impact on customer service
4. Comments

3. What else can I do?
For your mission, values, strategy, and action plans to be implemented effectively,
they have to be communicated and accepted. In addition, it is also necessary for the
leader to establish an environment of trust for these ideals to take root. This is
covered in Chapter Three: Culture and communication Developing a culture
committed to service.

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Putting leadership at the heart of the service experience

Chapter One: Leadership

Copyright of SPRING Singapore 2010 0|Page

Chapter One: Leadership

Leadership at the heart of the service experience

1. Why is leadership important?

2. Putting leadership at the heart of the service experience

3 What else can I do?

Copyright of SPRING Singapore 2010 1|Page

1. Why is leadership important?

When the leader or management of an organisation creates a clear and common

Copyright of SPRING Singapore 2010 2|Page

2. Putting leadership at the heart of the service experience

2.1 Customer satisfaction versus customer service

How your staff serves

your customer, e.g.,

Copyright of SPRING Singapore 2010 3|Page

2.2 Importance of leadership

Develop people: Leaders develop their people by giving them opportunities to

Copyright of SPRING Singapore 2010 4|Page

2.3 Develop customer service mission and goals

A customer service mission is an organisations promise to its customers about the

Achieving customer satisfaction by delivering a quality experience for our

To make people happy.

The mission should be a realistic, genuine, living statement that is meaningful to

A strong customer service mission allows both employees and customers to

Who are your customers?

Copyright of SPRING Singapore 2010 5|Page

Case Study: Toys R Us customer service mission

In their customer service mission, Toys R Us s has outlined:

When drafting your customer service mission:

A step-by-step guide to draft your organisations customer service mission can be

Tool 1.1 Template to create customer service mission

Copyright of SPRING Singapore 2010 6|Page

3 Customer Service Intent

Variety of choice Our customers will enjoy

Copyright of SPRING Singapore 2010 7|Page

Copyright of SPRING Singapore 2010 8|Page

2.4 Establish customer service values

Nurturing of "wholesome American values".

Creativity, dreams, and imagination.

Fanatical attention to consistency and detail.

Preservation and control of the Disney magic.

Service to the customer above all else.

Hard work and individual productivity.

Never being satisfied.

Excellence in reputation; being part of something special.

A step-by-step guide to draft your organisations customer service values can be

Copyright of SPRING Singapore 2010 9|Page

Tool 1.2 Identify your customer service values

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2.5 Establish strategies and key performance indicators

An overall strategy to achieve this mission.

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Tool 1.3 Template to develop service strategies and

3 Customer Service KPIs

Building relationships and Consistent interaction with

SOPs encourage compliance scores

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The next page shows an example of how KPIs can be tracked:

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Tool 1.4 Template to track KPIs

Eg. Highly Number of staff who

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