Customer Service Training Research Articles

Key Facilitators and Best Practices of Hotel-Style Room Service in Hospitals

This qualitative study sought to identify the features, advantages, and disadvantages of hotel-style room service; the barriers to, and facilitators for, implementing the process; and “best practices.” The study took place in four heterogeneous hospitals. Participants included hospital administrators, managers, and room-service employees. Data-collection methods included semi-structured interviews, observations, and document analysis. Common features of hotel-style room service were meal delivery within 30 to 45 minutes, a restaurant-style menu, procedures to feed ineligible patients, tray assembly on demand, scripting, and waitstaff uniforms for room-service employees. The major barrier to implementing room service was obtaining nursing support. The key facilitators were the hospital’s service-oriented culture, using a multidisciplinary planning team, engaging nursing departments early in the planning stages, and intense customer-service training of room-service employees. The overwhelming advantage was patients’ control over their food choices. The main disadvantage was cost. Initial best practices in hotel-style room service include: (a) taking a multidisciplinary team approach for developing and implementing the process, (b) customer-service training, (c) using a customer-driven menu, (d) wearing waitstaff uniforms, and (e) using carts with airpots for dispensing hot beverages.

Training customers: an organizational experience

PurposeTo analyze, through a case study, the essential premises on the basis of which a training plan for the customers of any given firm can be designed, implemented and evaluated.Design/methodology/approachThis paper starts with a review of the literature on customer service training, which is followed by a discussion on how a training plan for customers could be elaborated. After that, the case method is applied (mainly through semi‐structured interviews) to a firm that approaches this type of training in an innovative way.FindingsConcludes that a training plan for the firm's internal staff cannot be extrapolated to customers. Describes how training plans must be modified so as to adapt them to customers.Research limitations/implicationsIt will be nesessary to identify other cases and check to what extent the methodology resembles the one we have applied and how successful it is, so that a standard action protocol can be established.Practical implicationsPresents a real case of success at customer training in an industrial firm and provides a model, not only for future research, but also for the direct implementation of these techniques by other firms belonging to any industrial sector.Originality/valueThe accurate description of a training plan for customers made by an industrial firm and its treatment based on the study of a real case. The establishment of action guidelines that will pave the way for further academic research in this field as well as its clear business applicability.

Transport for London’s non‐traditional training

Kim Kneen of MICE AGA explains how Transport for London used professional actors in creating a learning and development program that reflected “the bigger picture” and brought customer service training to life.

Gaining a competitive advantage through customer service training

Research shows that when funds are tight, the most effective use of training investment is on frontline workers and frontline managers. Some of the key frontline employees are customer service representatives, since they are often the go‐between for customers and the company. One large mutlinational organization achieved a competitive edge by developing a customer service representative certificate program in cooperation with a Graduate School of Management and training management organization. Results impacted both the customer and the financial bottom line. Descriptions of this multi‐day certificate program, as well as important lessons for creating successful initiatives, are highlighted.

Student Perceptions of the Quality of Services Offered by the Office of Student Financial Aid

The purpose of this study was to discover students' perceptions of their experiences with the Office of Student Financial Aid at a Midwestern institution. Survey data revealed that, overall, most students agreed or strongly agreed that they were adequately informed about financial aid; that understanding various aspects of financial aid was important,· and that they received clear guidance to help resolve their problems or answer their questions by staff who served them in a timely, efficient, effective, and courteous manner. Recommendations suggested by this study include continued efforts to educate students and their families about financial aid, additional administrative staff, and customer service training for peer counselors and staff.

The impact of customer service on a resort community

The level of customer service provided by businesses in the resort community of Estes Park, Colorado, was investigated in this study. The problems and barriers in delivering quality customer service were determined through a collaborative process of data gathering that involved the use of surveys, group interviews and focus groups. The research confirmed that inconsistent customer service is a direct result of the lack of any customer service training programme, non-existent effort among the providers of tourism services, and low awareness of the impact of customer service as a key marketing and management tool in attracting new and repeat visitors. The research produced a model for developing a tourist-centred customer service campaign that incorporated community involvement in the design and execution of the research and resulting programmes.

Barclays banks on customer-service training

Barclays banks on customer-service training

Can You Hear Me? Corporate America's Communication with Dissatisfied Customers

The story made all the media. A Columbia business professor wrote 240 upper-class New York restaurants to complain that he developed food poisoning after eating at their businesses. He alluded to reporting the incident to the Better Business Bureau, but wanted the restaurateurs to have the chance to respond accordingly. Ordinarily, restaurants take food poisoning scares very seriously and a few began investigating. The restaurateurs found that it was all part of an ill-conceived research project, designed to measure vendor response to customer complaints. This story made the Museum of Hoaxes web site. The business professor was reprimanded and forced to apologize to all of the restaurants (Kifner). However, the real issue of this story was missed. Only 60 of the 240 restaurants responded. Obviously, these businesses adopted one of the halfdozen stances for dealing with customer complaints-ignore them and hope the angry customers go away. Only 60 responded, even when threatened with a bad report to the Better Business Bureau; and even when threatened with a health condition that could completely close their businesses. We maintain that complainers can be of real value. Customer-initiated complaining is one of the cheapest marketing research strategies available, plus these complaints offer a business the opportunity to increase satisfaction, thus making a customer more loyal. After all, it was the flood of complaint calls to their 1-800-GET COKE tollfree phone line that made Coca-Cola return the 66 classic formula to the shelves and eventually phase out Coke (Bear). One customer service training manual compiles several studies and offers this overview of handling complaints: -Eighty-five % of customers who stop buying from a company do so because they believe the company does not care about them or their business. -Only four % of disgruntled customers report their complaints to the company. The other 96 percent simply take their business elsewhere. -Over ninety-one % of customers who are dissatisfied with a company's products or services will not buy from the establishment again. -Customers who have a positive experience tell, on average, five people about their experience. -Sixty-five % of a company's business comes from repeat sales. -Lowering the percentage of customers who stop buying by as little as five % can increase a company's profits by as much as eighty-five %. -Acquiring new customers costs five to ten times more than keeping existing customers happy. -It's five times more costly to acquire new customers than to keep current ones. -Pre-Internet, unhappy customers told, on average, eight to sixteen people about their negative experience (Career Solutions 2002). It is the last point which led to this study. With today's free web sites and internet chat rooms, the number of people that unhappy customers contact is likely to be much higher. Indeed, in our home state of Florida, an unhappy customer has posted a web site called www.dumb-assDOT.com as retribution for the Florida Department of Transportation's treatment of him. Further, he purchased a billboard on Interstate 75, announcing the web site. The site invites other unhappy consumers to post their own gripes. To date, 3,488 hits have been recorded on the site, but 14,000 vehicles per day pass that billboard. Further, there are new entrepreneurial ventures that will help a consumer forward a complaint to the appropriate person at a company-- eComplaints.com, Planetfeedback.com, and eSatisfy.com. The consumer can receive a private reply or can have the reply posted to the site so everyone can read it. These companies make money by encouraging the companies to participate and pay a fee for the statistical analysis of the complaint information received. If, indeed, only four to five %Io of dissatisfied customers ever complain to the businesses (and who could really measure that? …

How Quality Award‐Winning Governments Handle Customer Service

AbstractRecognizing that customer service is becoming an increasingly important function of government, quality award‐winning governments, at all levels and around the world, are not only seeking customer feedback, but are incorporating customer satisfaction measures into their strategic plans. Thus, they are setting customer standards that are evaluated regularly, benchmarking customer service procedures against the best in business, and including customer service training, benchmarking, and customer satisfaction performance measures in labor contracts. This article, which examined the customer service practices of quality award‐winning governments at the federal, state, and local level in the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia, demonstrates the worldwide nature of the quality improvement and customer satisfaction effort. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Student Assistants as Library Ambassadors

The successful delivery of customer service skills in the library is an important component of public relations. Within academic libraries, there is a group of employees who are willing and able to provide excellent service skills. The library student assistant has been relied upon to staff service desks and areas where direct, repeated daily contact with patrons is part of his or her job. However, these part-time, temporary employees are seldom given formal training and recognition to ensure that the library's service philosophies receive full compliance. The development of a customer service training initiative and an employee recognition program for the library student assistant would be an advantageous staff development concept.

Building Quality Improvement over the Long Run: Approaches, Results, and Lessons Learned from the PennDOT Experience

A lthough a substantial literature on quality management in the public sector has accumulated over the past 10 years, very little has been written about the development of mature quality programs in public agencies over the long run. Surveys indicate that large numbers of agencies at all levels of government have adopted quality programs (Berman & West, 1995; Kravchuk & Leighton, 1993), but it is not clear whether many of them have moved beyond the initial stages with a strong commitment to making quality a way of life within their organizations on an ongoing basis. Much of the existing literature in this area has been prospective in nature (Brough, 1992; Carr & Littman, 1990; Sensenbrenner, 1991), and articles aimed at assessing the implementation of quality programs in public agencies focus primarily on start-up activities or relatively short-term experience (Cox, 1995; Maher, 1995; McNabb & Sepic, 1995; Rago, 1996), in large part because most public sector agencies still have relatively little actual experience with quality management. For the most part anyway, even articles that attempt to assess the effectiveness of quality improvement efforts in public agencies, such as one focusing on the Florida Department of Transportation (Bowman & French, 1992) or another examining the Internal Revenue Service (Mani, 1995) have looked at fairly modest evaluative frameworks and relatively short time frames. More recently, an analysis of attempts to develop total quality management programs in several Florida state agencies since the early 1990s found many of these programs still floundering in the early stages (Bowman & Hellein, 1998). Although most of these agencies had incorporated quality as an element of their strategic plans, and had become involved in gathering data from customers and providing employees with customer service training, they had made very

Tourists and taxis: An examination of the tourism transport interface

This exploratory study examines the views of taxi drivers towards government policy objectives concerning the taxi industry in the broader tourism context. The research evaluates attempts by the government of the State of Victoria, Australia to strengthen the link between taxis and tourism and to enhance the level of service quality provided to tourists by the taxi industry. It then assesses whether these attempts were consistent with the views and attitudes of taxi drivers themselves, and evaluates the responses of groups of respondents on the basis of demographics. The 300 respondents were generally supportive of the objective of strengthening the taxi driver’s role in projecting a positive destination image to taxi users. They endorsed the introduction of customer service training and, in particular, the ‘knowledge of Melbourne’ test. The researchers concluded that respondents have a poor understanding of what the government has described as ‘world-class service’ and suggest that the communication of this objective has been inadequate. Despite the government’s enthusiasm for tourist information dissemination, it was found that few taxis currently display the relevant printed material. A new state government has been elected to power and has confirmed its ongoing commitment to developing the taxi and tourism relationship, although some modification of policies formulated under the previous administration may be anticipated.

Strategies for Improving Customer Service in Leisure Organizations

As competition in the leisure sector continues to increase, creating and maintaining customer loyalty becomes paramount for business success. Customer loyalty can be promoted and nurtured via customer service, resulting in added value to the business exchange, reduced costs of doing business, and customer acceptance of less than perfect program delivery. Additionally, customer service is consistent with total quality management initiatives. This article discusses five customer service strategies that can be applied to any leisure enterprise. These strategies include (1) hiring practices; (2) customer service training; (3) front-line responsiveness; (4) customer response network; and (5) management by walking around. Customer service does not have to be an allusive or costly business objective. However, management must be proactive in establishing and maintaining these mutually beneficial customer relationships. Lip service to this issue will no longer suffice.

Emergency Department Patient Satisfaction: Customer Service Training Improves Patient Satisfaction and Ratings of Physician and Nurse Skill

Customer service initiatives in healthcare have become a popular way of attempting to improve patient satisfaction. This study investigates the effect of clinically focused customer service training on patient satisfaction in the setting of a 62,000-visit emergency department and level I trauma center. Analysis of patient complaints, patient compliments, and a statistically verified patient-satisfaction survey indicate that (1) all 14 key quality characteristics identified in the survey increased dramatically in the study period; (2) patient complaints decreased by over 70 percent from 2.6 per 1,000 emergency department (ED) visits to 0.6 per 1,000 ED visits following customer service training; and (3) patient compliments increased more than 100 percent from 1.1 per 1,000 ED visits to 2.3 per 1,000 ED visits. The most dramatic improvement in the patient satisfaction survey came in ratings of skill of the emergency physician, likelihood of returning, skill of the emergency department nurse, and overall satisfaction. These results show that clinically focused customer service training improves patient satisfaction and ratings of physician and nurse skill. They also suggest that such training may offer a substantial competitive market advantage, as well as improve the patients' perception of quality and outcome.

PRACTITIONER RESPONSE: Emergency Department Patient Satisfaction: Customer Service Training Improves Patient Satisfaction and Ratings of Physician and Nurse Skill

president/CEO, Lakeland Regional Medical Center, Lakeland, Florida; Ed Goodemote, vice president, Lakeland Regional Medical Center

New developments in customer service training

Customer service representatives are no longer perceived as secretaries or telephone operators, nor considered as mere support staff for personnel working in the field. Rather, they are increasingly viewed as carriers and guardians of the company’s image, and key players in the organization’s customer retention plan. Highlights how training for customer service staff is, therefore, taking on a new perspective.

A processual analysis of customer service training

Proposes that customer service training processes should be studied as a multidimensional issue, recognizing an analytical dimension of tasks, technique, procedure, and system; a behavioral dimension concerned with attitudes, perceptions, and motivation; and an organizational learning dimension concerned with management styles, corporate culture, structure, and information flows. Explores in addition three elements necessary for effective customer service training implementation.

New developments in customer service training

In today’s volatile economy, providing excellent customer service can be the critical difference between a company’s success and failure. Customers today are better educated than ever before. They are increasingly careful about purchases and the dollars they spend and want value for their money. Customers also want good service and are willing to pay for it. The level of courtesy and assistance required from a customer service representative has increased dramatically over the past decade as a result of the customer’s upgraded “acceptable” service standards; more skills are required, such as telephone courtesy and assistance, effective telemarketing skills, customer retention, problem‐solving capabilities, maintaining customer satisfaction, and effective use of available technology. As a result, companies in various industries are induced to provide distinguished customer service in order to remain competitive. Learning is taking on strategic importance. Demand for customer service training is higher than ever before. Such extraordinary commitment can be elicited only in the context of a corporate culture that emphasizes caring about employees and sharing of the service ethic by everyone in the organization ‐ starting with the CEO. A business which offers not just the bare‐bones basics but exceptional, value‐amplified service, which anticipates and caters to a whole range of customer needs and desires, sets itself far above the competition.

Old Wine in New Bottles Tastes Better: A Case Study of TQM Implementation in the IRS

Joseph Juran is an author, lecturer, and corporate advisor on Total Quality Management (TQM). Juran (1964) has had experience in universities, industry, and government agencies, and he believes that the principles of TQM can be applied with equal success in any of these settings. Swiss (1992), however, argued that orthodox principles of TQM, as taught by Juran, Deming, and others, must be modified to be successfully implemented in government. He suggested that there is a need for output goals and measurements, employee empowerment, feedback from customers, and continuous improvement efforts. This case study of TQM implementation in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) analyzes one government agency's approach and explores other issues. Were there improvements in productivity and customer service in the IRS after TQM implementation? If so, were the changes the result of TQM? Is TQM a change or simply reinforcement and expansion of existing, positive practices of the traditional art and science of public administration? The Decision to Adopt TQM in the Internal Revenue Service In the early months of 1985, processing fell behind at the Internal Revenue Service Centers when nearly 180 million tax returns and supplemental documents arrived. The cause of many problems was a complete computer system conversion at 10 service centers. As the problems were resolved, the service centers caught up and processed 6 million returns per week in April 1985 - the fastest processing rate the centers had ever accomplished (Internal Revenue Service, 1986). Early that year, there was national, adverse publicity of problems with erroneous notices, lost tax returns, and enormous increases in taxpayer correspondence. More problems resulted from the drive for productivity at any cost - in this case, the cost was quality service to taxpayers (Federal Quality Institute, 1992). In 1986, the IRS began a journey from crisis to quality. The decision to implement TQM was an agency decision in response to the demands of the customers that the agency was designed to serve. The most important of these customers were Congress and the taxpaying public. When taxpayers related their concerns to congressional representatives, and when executive oversight agencies reported that the agency was delivering poor service, the agency was encouraged to develop strategies to improve the quality of service. Within this political context, the agency chose to implement TQM. Employee resistance was apparent when the IRS began quality and customer service training. Some employees and managers gave reasons why they would be unable to attend their scheduled training. Some employees who attended training explained that it seemed inappropriate to call taxpayers customers. Other employees believed that TQM was just another trend that upper level management would advocate and then abandon in favor of a newer trend. Other employees believed that TQM would make no difference because quality service had always been their objective (Mani, 1994). Resistance to change is a common problem in organizations that adopt the total quality management philosophy (Juran, 1964). This resistance may be even greater in public sector organizations where standard operating procedures are clearly specified and regulate both policy and practice. This resistance may be lessened if decision makers believe that TQM includes changes that will lessen existing problems and help prevent problems in the future (Cohen and Brand, 1993). Implementation of TQM in the Internal Revenue Service Demonstrated commitment of top-level management is critical to the successful implementation of TQM (Krone, 1991). This commitment has been apparent at all stages of implementation in the IRS - both in organizational structure and in quality training. The first changes in organizational structure began at the top level in the national office. In 1986 the commissioner of the IRS instituted the Commissioner's Quality Council, which included the associate commissioners, two regional commissioners, the assistant commissioner for human resources and management support (ex-officio), and the executive secretary (ex-officio). …

Customer-service training in academic libraries

In recent years libraries and academia have become increasingly interested in customer service and Total Quality Management issues. Reflecting these interests, academic librarians have implemented a variety of customer-service training programs. This article profiles selected customer-service training programs and popular customer-service videos.