I’ve had some interesting experiences recently in my interactions with a couple of companies and their ideas of service standards.

Example 1

I was doing some work for a client that required us to get some articles approved by an external compliance area.  They were simple articles that only provided a general overview of the subject matter.  For legal purposes I didn’t want the articles to provide too much detail.  The first set took 6 working days to get approved and came back with an email saying sorry for the delay, but pointing out that the service standards allowed for these approvals to take 5 working days so they were really only a day late.

Example 2

In the financial business we deal with a couple of insurance companies.  We lodge applications for life insurance with these insurers.

Both companies have internal service standards with regards to the amount of time it takes them to process the application, have it looked at by an underwriter and then send us an email letting us know the status of the application.  Both companies tell us they regularly meet their internal benchmarks i.e. they’re achieving their service standards.

However, one company can process things inside 48 hours, the other takes over a week.  Remember, both are hitting their internal benchmarks.  The second company thinks it’s doing well based on its internal benchmark, however I don’t judge it based on it’s internal benchmarks, I judge it based on my experience with similar companies and the reality is that it is not competitive compared to its opposition.

Lessons We Can Learn

In the first example, it frustrates me that service standards are used to cover up inefficiencies in business processes.  When we send an email with content to be approved, someone at the other end needs to open that email, read the article and decide whether it needs to be referred to a technical or legal area for further checking and verification.  If it doesn’t need to go to those areas, why can’t that person spend another 10 minutes checking the article and approving it?

What currently happens is that it gets opened, checked and then placed in a queue to be checked later.  To me that’s inefficient.  If you’ve got it open then action it.

The second example highlights the danger of not having your internal benchmarks aligned to external benchmarks.  Always make sure your benchmarks are relevant to the people they affect.  If they affect your clients, then find out what your clients expect and make sure you can meet their needs.

Do you have service standards in your business?  Are they relevant?  Do your clients know about them?  Leave a comment and let us know.