Service Design for Government
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team-based approach to building a service culture

3 Ways to Grow a Service-Oriented Team

People working in government and nonprofits often refer to a personal calling to serve the public good. Their sense of purpose can be a source of energy for their peers and their customers cannot help but feel their enthusiasm for the mission. But even the most passionate public servant has an occasional bad day – it is human nature and most people are willing to give us a pass when we stressed or distracted.

Unfortunately, the service itself doesn’t get the same courtesy. Customers expect service quality to be maintained and the experience to be consistent despite the occasional system outage, process glitch, or failure of personality. Services have to systematically overcome these variables to consistently provide a relevant customer experience. As a service provider, here are three ways to develop a service-oriented mindset:

  1. Find the Services, Find the Customers. The first step of a services mindset begins with the customers; identify what problem you solve for them and how they interact with your team to solve that problem. Both the solution and the interactions are part of your service portfolio. Some of these services are easily recognizable – like a haircut or table service at a restaurant – but some can be tricky. Business support functions like the Finance Department, Human Relations, and the CIO’s office can also be viewed through a services lens. Unlike consumer services, internal customers don’t typically pay with money but they do pay with their time. Scheduling a meeting to discuss next year’s budget, providing a brown bag session to present the impact of new hiring policy, or waiting for a call back from a technical expert are all examples of services that contribute to an internal customer experience.
  2. Optimize Services Around Customer Needs. Once the services have been named, engage customers to better understand what is important to them – do they care more about accuracy or speed in the weekly report, are the templates provided helpful in crafting new job descriptions, what was the impact of the last system outage on their productivity. This initial feedback can go a long way, but look for opportunities to formally measure the performance of your services against these attributes. In a consumer service, service quality is captured in a contract document called Service Level Agreement; while it may not make sense in your organization to take it this far, it is worthwhile to communicate to your customers that your performance objectives are focused on the things they care about.
  3. Build Service into the Culture. Shifting culture is never easy, but there are several things that leaders can do to change the tone of the conversation with their employees. First, involve them in the process we have outlined above, encouraging them to think about the services they personally provide and those they contribute to on the team. Expose them to new ideas and techniques for how to approach a customer conversation with empathy or how to constructively accept feedback. Teach them how to measure their service portfolio against customer performance attributes. Model the behavior yourself; emphasizing that the customer is always in the forefront of your mind. When pitching a new project, include the expected customer impact in your scope statement. When being briefed on an issue, first ask about the impact to the customer and how the customer is being taken care of in the interim before digging into the details of the problem. Each of these small actions can have a big impact when repeated consistently.

These relatively simple exercises will take some time up front but can have an immediate impact. We are currently mentoring a Support Department Head of a medium-sized organization responsible for IT services, acquisition and contracting, and human relations. While a little nervous about exposing some of her team’s shortcomings at first, she has found her customers are receptive to offering feedback and employees are energized about the opportunity to think more explicitly about serving customer needs.

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