A great service culture is always a product of a whole architecture that includes education, service processes and structures that support customer-focused behavior.

Most customer-service improvement efforts fail to provide this type of architecture because their design misses, in particular, the strong impact of structure on behavior. Structure may include reporting relationships or physical structures that best facilitate service process. The designers are wary of changing structures to support service outcomes because such change is emotionally charged, takes a significant amount of effort and requires intense commitment. Yet, few individuals or departments can be effective and shine unless their organizational and physical structures are aligned with their brand’s customer service promise.

Building a service culture in any organization requires that systems and processes reflect and support service as a key business driver. One system is performance management.

Performance management, performance appraisal, employee review – whatever name you have for it – is a common, often dreaded, and largely under-utilized process for managing an organization. Yet it can be one of the most effective tools for leading change – ensuring a service culture, or any cultural focus, can be created and sustained over time.

Many of us enjoy doing business with people from countries, ethnicities, and backgrounds that are different from our own. This brings into our lives, and the lives of those we serve, a wonderful sense of the colorful, cultural, and amazing world in which we live and work.

This colorful combination is also loaded with opportunities to accidentally misstep or inadvertently create negative impressions. Since our definition of service is “to create value for someone else”, then service can enhanced when we are conscious of others’ backgrounds and their cultures, and the manner in which they prefer to be served.

Let me tell you a story from my own background, and how I accidentally offended the host from one of my most influential clients (this was before my time with UP! Your Service).

We regularly work with CEOs and senior leaders to help them build uplifting service cultures and improve service performance. Most leaders understand their roles and are eager to provide direction and support to transform their culture.

However, given their intensive schedules and responsibilities, it’s unreasonable to expect high-level leaders to know the details of all service improvement and culture-building initiatives. While they meet to review initiatives periodically, the Ultimate Question 1.0 can significantly leverage their time and commitment every day.

Ultimate Question 1.0: What is your team’s best idea to improve service today?

Let me begin by thanking you; thanking you for taking the time to read our blog, for your passion for service. Allow me to tell you how much WE appreciate YOU.

I had the opportunity, recently, to read the most beautiful note of appreciation that was sent to Ron Kaufman. The writer of this note, expressed his gratitude in such a tender, heart-felt way, not from a standpoint of attempting flattery, but spoken from his personal experience. This most wonderful note gave me pause to consider the gifts contained within gratitude.

Over the many years of working with organizations to help them become ‘customer centered’, I have witnessed a number of successes as well as failures. By understanding why these well-intentioned initiatives fail and looking for common causes we are able to address them early in the planning process for future initiatives and thus increase the odds of success.

The six most common reasons for failure I have seen throughout my career are these:

How many times have you tried to explain to a friend or associate, the value of service culture, only to have them misunderstand your intention? Have you often needed to explain that we are educators (and lifelong practitioners) of “service culture”, and found your words inadequate?

How can we explain that “service culture” is not just the actions of “customer service”, but a much bigger, much more global offering? Do the words sometimes escape what your heart clearly understands?

At UP! Your Service, we work with clients around the world who want to create positive cultural change by building an Uplifting Service Culture. While these clients vary from global, multi-national organizations to government agencies, our experience shows that leadership is always a vital predictor of success.

We note three characteristics of successful personal change that also apply to leading cultural change in a large organization.

Few leaders ‘meet employees where they are’ and effectively translate scores and targets into the ideas and actions employees care about.

To help your employees understand and care about quantitative measures, consider and then take these five steps:

Step One: Identify and quantify the changes you want to achieve
Step Two: Design and deliver effective communications
Step Three: Measure intent first, not outcomes
Step Four: Design effective systems and processes for support
Step Five: Realize your managers are more important than you

It has been well documented that providing excellent service to your customers will reap both personal and financial rewards.

But what happens when service falls short? What happens when your staff members, your procedures, or your operations fails to fulfill the corporate goal of quality? Worse yet, what happens when even the desire to provide great service fades away?

The American Express Global Customer Service Barometer tells us that a lack of quality service is far more costly than most people realize.