Paradigms are the rules, standards, and boundaries within which we live and work. With today’s volatile economy and increasing competition, it’s more important than ever to deliver quality service that keeps your customers happy.
In conjunction with management and co-workers, identify and examine the existing paradigms of your own agency. Determine whether they help or hinder customer service excellence, and then change those with disadvantages that outweigh advantages.
IDENTIFY EXISTING PARADIGMS
First, group the work tasks at your agency into types of activities. The following areas are good places to start when looking for existing paradigms:
- Submission of applications to multiple companies
- Cancellation follow-up
- Suspense activities (master file, logs, centralization, etc.)
- Office hours
Second, identify a procedure (or procedures) followed at work that seems to exist for no obvious reason-one that has mysterious origins or of doubtful benefit to clients, companies, or co-workers. Pose a question. Take, for example, office hours: What is the purpose of a 9:00-to-5:00 workday?
Third, list the advantages and disadvantages of the procedure-for the agency and the customer. This can be done in a group meeting or by distributing a questionnaire to all concerned employees. Again using the 9:00-to-5:00 workday as an example, questions might include:
- Advantages: What tasks are made easier when everyone in the agency follows a 9:00-to-5:00 schedule? What customer needs are met by these hours?
- Disadvantages: Why operate 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (or a slight variation) if the majority of your clients are working or unavailable during these hours?
You might also create a separate list of advantages and disadvantages for customer needs. Determine any peculiarities or special needs of your client base. Finally, compare lists. If the advantages outweigh disadvantages, maintain the procedure. If, however, the disadvantages reign, consider alternative practices.
ALTERNATIVE PARADIGMS
This stage of paradigm analysis involves discussing, creating, and testing alternative procedures.
- Discuss: Brainstorm and try to devise new ideas and new new of doing things. Allow ideas to develop freely and without censorship.
- Create: Review the newly created list of suggestions as a group. This is the time to include management in the process. Compile the results of the questionnaire and print them for everyone's review, or write the ideas generated during the brainstorming session on a blackboard or presentation easel. Discard those that are unworkable. Select one or two new procedures to replace the ineffectual one.
- Test: Set criteria to measure the outcome of the new practice. In most cases, a 30-day trial period should be sufficient; however, some practices might require a longer trial period. If appropriate, experiment with more than one technique. You might choose to test a modified approach with just one CSR until the glitches have been addressed.
- Evaluate: After the 30-day trial period, have a meeting with all personnel affected by the procedure and decide the outcome (i.e., whether to create a new paradigm).
Paradigms function as organizing structures for efficient customer service, but shouldn’t become limiting to agency goals and objectives.
CONCLUSION
Changing long-established procedures might feel a bit risky at first. But remember, the new paradigms are subject to the same analysis as traditional ones. The process of analysis provides a rationale for work procedures. When someone asks why you perform a task a certain way, rather than answering, “That’s the way we’ve always done it,” paradigm analysis enables you to say, “We do _______ this way because ______.”
Try it — you’ll like it!