Chances are your company has a defined mission statement. A short description of your market, goals, and how you intend to reach those goals. But have you ever given any thought about your customer service department’s mission?
Chances are your company has a defined mission statement. A short description of your market, goals, and how you intend to reach those goals. But have you ever given any thought about your customer service department’s mission?
The loyalty of customers isn’t easily won, but once captured, customer loyalty goes a long way to ensuring repeat business. Most people have a preferred airline, coffee place, and favorite restaurant that they’ll happily recommend to their friends.
This is customer loyalty, earned by brands who make sure their values permeate their products and customer service practices. The best brands do a great job of showcasing their values, inspired by a vision for the future of their company and their industry. They strive to build experiences that their customers enjoy and employees are proud to be a part of.
Acting on that vision requires a well-defined mission statement that serves to keep all employees inspired and moving in the same direction, and enables your customer service team to act on your company’s vision. Here are five benefits that come with formulating your customer service mission statement:
A well-written customer service mission statement clearly demonstrates how the work your customer service team does on a daily basis contributes to the company’s mission.
A powerful mission statement gives your brand a unique identity. A customer service mission statement is seen and remembered by your customers as a promise you aim to fulfill. In order to keep that promise, your business needs to identify various factors to keep everyone moving in the right direction; these could be the products or services you provide, the values you instill in your team, and the people you wish to serve.
A mission statement sets a guideline for employees to act upon. It keeps them working in the right direction as they know where they are headed, and when they’re doing a great job. When all employees are intimately familiar with your mission statement you can expect them to act in line with the mission you’ve established.
Working in customer service can be a repetitive job. Repetition can quickly cause your team to lose track of why their work matters and wreak havoc on their motivation. Having a strong mission statement that you repeat and reinforce often helps your team continue to be motivated and helps them understand how their everyday work contributes to the company’s strategic goals.
There are many different ways to measure the success of a customer service team. Customer service goals can usually be translated into KPIs that are either time-based or quality-based (E.g: AHT vs NPS). Your customer service mission statement can go a long way to justifying and explaining the KPIs you use to gauge customer service performance. Take this mission statement as an example:
We strive to be available to all of our customers within 1 minute of call time at all hours of the day.
To measure the extent to which your team accomplishes this mission you could use KPIs like Average Waiting Time (AWT) and Service Level Agreement adherence (SLA) (For a detailed explanation of these and more metrics, go here). If this is your customer service mission then these two KPIs are very important while others (CSAT or NPS, for example) aren’t. It also helps to explain to your team why their performance is scored using those KPIs.
Hopefully, this article has inspired you to start thinking about your customer service department’s mission statement. When used correctly it can be a powerful tool in getting all noses pointed in the right direction, keeping your team motivated, and working toward success.
Need a hand deciding setting goals for your customer service team? Reach out to request a consultation with one of our experts.
