Caring Experts

Our customer focussed mission is to be 'Caring Experts'. We use this phrase as a 'compass' to guide us in everything we do from strategy, to systems, to processes, to behaviour.

Our objective is that in all our dealings with people, and each other, that we will be Caring Experts. That the recipient of our exchanges with them will feel that each encounter is handled with genuine care and true expertise that represents full industry best practice. It is our belief that through doing this we will be able to grow our company steadily by creating and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships.

Our aim is that through investing in customer relationships in this way that we will be seen as a considerate advisor, and not a mere service provider.

Caring Experts is all about moments. These two words came to us following a series of meetings and workshops where we focussed on who we wanted to be and what our strengths were. These two words sum up everything that is important to us about how we treat each other, our business partners and suppliers and our customers. We have moments every day where we have choice to do more than a standard 'good job'. It mostly doesn't require a huge effort. In fact we call it “going the extra inch” [Guy Arnold].

There's a quotation we use to help us understand this: “Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think that there are no little things” [Bruce Barton].

When we have choices we try to approach them all through the filter of the values and behaviour of 'Caring Experts'. Whether we're making an investment decision, handling a customer complaint or seeking to protect profit margin we ask ourselves “What would a Caring Expert do?”

For our customers we recognise that the manner in which we provide our services is as important, if not more important, than the actual service we provide.

Caring Experts is a concept that starts and ends within each person in our team. We each play an important role in managing our customers' experiences with us. We have broken down our services into key customer touch points and are intentional with what we do and say at each of them in order that we can do all we can to ensure their experience meets, and hopefully exceeds their expectations. This applies from the moment they phone or email us, through service delivery, invoicing and satisfaction checks and considerate ongoing communication with them.

Expertise come through experience, the right kind of training and receiving regular input from other experts. Our induction process, probation plans, personal development plans and appraisals are all designed to pro-actively manage these things to best effect.

Caring is an attitude. We can encourage it within each other, but we've never successfully implanted it in a new team member. We therefore choose very carefully who we allow to join our team to ensure they share our values and can embrace this mission. We all are very proud of what we do and of each other and realise that this can only continue if we all pull together.

The 'team' is central to Caring Experts working effectively. It's important that we continue to meet regularly to listen to each other to share highs and lows and to pool ideas to enable us to continually improve what we do and grow the expertise of each person. We care for each other and want the best for each other and enjoy our shared success. Life's tough sometimes too and we do all we can to support each other through the tough times.

Over the years we have become more acutely aware how important it is to be considerate of time for our customers. This goes far beyond turning up on time (or communicating if there's an unavoidable delay). Availability is crucial. If a customer has to contact us twice to get an answer to something, we've failed. Our systems, facilities and personnel need to be in sufficient supply and preparedness to ensure we are available when our customers call upon us. When we deliver a service we also do what we can to minimize the inconvenience to our customers in terms of how it affects them and their time before, during and after our services are delivered.

Questions are a vital part of managing a positive experience with a customer. We can help the customer best, deliver the best service, minimise any inconvenience and avoid most complaints by up-front management of customers' expectations. We try hard not to assume too much and ask questions to ensure we understand what's important to the customer. We also consider it a privilege to be invited into their home or business. We explain what we're going to do and why and ask permission before proceeding. We also realise that customers don't know what we know. We try to gently and considerately advise them through asking questions to help us see things from their perspective.

How we present ourselves is also an important part of managing the customer's experience. Our frontline staff wear full, clean uniform and ensure they present themselves clean, fully engaged and ready to serve. We also clean and maintain our vans and equipment in order to present them in the best way possible. You'll never see anything on the dashboard of a ServiceMaster Clean van out of our office!

We do all we can to avoid complaints but we're prepared if they do come. We have a procedure designed to help us understand and respond swiftly. We recognise that companies don't help customers...people do. Central to our complaint procedure is taking personal responsibility for managing it.

It's relatively easy to put a bunch of words together to illustrate your intentions. Practice however is a challenge. We realise that we're on a journey. We all genuinely embrace Caring Experts and since its inception in 2009 we've made continued progress in developing initiatives and embedding the mission in all we do. As we move forward it remains very much our customer focussed mission.

Key Caring Expert Objectives

• We will answer the phone with a clear, friendly greeting within three rings during normal working hours. Our greeting is “Good morning/afternoon, ServiceMaster Clean.”
• A person will answer the phone out of hours for emergency customers in order that they can rest assured that the issue is in hand.
• If a customer is waiting for us to do something we will clearly commit to a date and time when we will contact them next.
• Our team will meet once a fortnight in order to discuss our goals, progress and challenges in order to ensure there is always free and open dialogue between us.
• We will wash our vans at least once a week and ensure the cockpit and loading space is clean and orderly.
• We will devote 4 hours a month of management time to proactive management of training and development of personnel and health and safety.
• We will turn up on time to every appointment or telephone at the earliest opportunity if there is an unavoidable delay.
• Upon arrival all staff will smile, make eye contact, use the customer's name as part of their greeting and offer their own also.
• We will ask for feedback on every job we do via our response cards (and web-based questionnaire) and collate and review the information we gather. We will personally telephone customers from time to time to review their experience.
• We will look for opportunities to do something extra, without charge, on every job we do. If we can't do that we will leave a small gift for each customer.
• Whoever is first to hear of a complaint will take personal ownership of that complaint. If this is as a result of a service failure, the main person who has had face to face contact with the customer will take responsibility for its correction (if appropriate).
• Customer facing staff will always wear full, clean uniform, be clean shave, have clean shoes and personal hygiene will be good.
• On larger projects we will, at least, provide weekly updates to our customers, and all key parties, via email.
• We will ask questions of our customers in order to understand their needs and help them to make informed decisions.
• If a customer is not happy with our service delivery, we will offer to do it again, promptly, without charge or fuss. If it is still not acceptable we will refund their money.
• We will take time as a team to socialize at least 4 times per annum.
• We will celebrate each other's birthdays by all chipping in to buy a present.
• We will share customer feedback with each other at team meeting and via email and post our feedback on our web site.
• If we become aware of something special happening with our customers such as wedding, retirement, birthday, anniversary, success of some kind, we will take the time to write a card and send our best wishes.
• We will treat every customer with sincerity and respect and do the same with each other.
• We do not tolerate moaning. We expect each member of our team to take responsibility for internal complaints and issues as well as customer service complaints and issues. We expect presentation of any problem to be accompanied by suggestions for its resolution.
• We will ask our customers to suggest one thing we could have done to make their experience with us better during the customer feedback process.
• We will continue to invest in each other. Every member of the team will have the opportunity to continue to develop their expertise. This will mainly be considered during appraisals and will be reviewed by management to ensure we are on track.
• We will recruit slowly and carefully. Our choices will be made with the input of a number of members in our team and will be primarily focussed on attitude.