1. Customer-Defined Service Standards
Chapter 10
Customer-Defined Service Standards

2. Factors for Appropriate Service Standards
Standardization of Service Behaviours and Actions
Personal contact instead of technology
Improvements in work methods
Combination of the two above methods.
Formal Service Targets
How long does it take to settle customer complaints?
How frequent does service fail?
Customer – not Company Defined Standards.
Customers set the norm for the standards.

3. Types of Customer Defined Service Standards
Hard Customer-Defined Standards
Something that can be measured – i.e., we will ship it to you in two days guaranteed!
Soft Customer-Defined Standards
Provide direction, guidance, and feedback to employees to achieve customer satisfaction. Can be collected by talking to customers and other stakeholders such as employees and suppliers
One-Time Fixes
“technology, policy, or procedure changes that, when instituted, address customer requirements”

4. Hard and Soft Customer-Defined Standards – Table 10.1, page 257

5. Development of Customer-Defined Service Standards
Basing standards on the service encounter sequence
Using a blueprint can help
Where should the focus be – front end or back end?
Expressing customer requirements as specific behaviours and actions
Measuring behaviours and actions
Not all behaviours/actions are measurable
Sometimes are broken down into hard and soft measurements
Adapting standards globally or locally
SERVICE acronym (p.260)
Developing customer-defined standards
Figure 10.5 – next slide
Developing service performance indexes

6. Process for Setting Customer-Defined Standards
Figure 10.5
9. Update target levels and measures
1. Identify existing or desired service encounter sequence
2. Translate customer expectations into behaviors/actions
4. Set hard or soft standards
5. Develop feedback mechanisms
Measure by
audits or
operating data
Hard
Soft
transaction-
based surveys
3. Select behaviors/actions for standards
6. Establish measures and target levels
7. Track measures against standards
8. Provide feedback about performance to employees