Who is responsible???

By Rowdy McLean. December 2008

When we think about service excellence we often only think of front line service - direct contact with the customers.   However to be judged as being EXCELLENT we need to deliver service at every single touch point or at every point that someone is required to support someone in delivering service to the customer.

I recently experienced this.

My companies spend thousands of dollars on stationary, manuals, photocopying, pencils, pads etc etc... We choose to place all this work with one company who provide absolutely fantastic front-line service. I mean we rave about these guys!

We have been giving them our business consistently for 4 years and every year the amount we have spent with them has grown significantly, until now!!!

What has gone wrong you may ask, and so should the company!

Having spent an enormous amount of money with this business over the years and having always paid our account I was surprised the other day to find our account had been suspended.

WHY? - "Your account was not paid on the due date" was the reply. I asked them if they had my phone number and email address to which they replied, "of course".

Do you see the problem?

Having spent thousands, increased the spend each year and having a record of paying our account on time, the company could not make a phone call or send an email to find out if there was a reason for the payment delay or to advise us of the oversight. No!! Just suspend the account! When I suggested this to the manager and accounts department via email, neither bothered to respond.

Why should accounts not be responsible for delivering excellence or for that matter, deliveries, dispatch, records, HR, payroll, maintenance, security, marketing etc…

Service Excellence is the responsibility of everyone in the organisation, regardless of their role.

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