No one is so high up in the organization that they are above waiting on customers — Jack Mitchell, “Hug Your Customers” There’s a great deal of talk today about the importance of customer service as a key competitive differentiator. More and more businesses are coming to the point of view that customer service is not a department within an organization, but rather an attitude, a philosophy and the mission of the entire company. It is widely stated that these days customer service is everyone’s job and responsibility. It is meant to go well beyond the frontline call center or a reception desk. Although the “everyone does customer service” approach is widely accepted and fruitfully adopted by leading companies worldwide as a key part of their business strategy, one can’t help but wonder what it takes to get everyone involved in customer service. For startups and small businesses, keeping everyone on the same page and getting all employees to wear all kinds of new hats is quite a common practice. But it gets a bit complicated in case of a larger and long-standing organization. How do you go about turning the tide and implementing the new standards?
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