What Is a Service Mindset?

A service mindset is an outlook that focuses on creating customer value, loyalty and trust. A business with this outlook wants to go beyond simply providing a product or service. It wants to create a positive and indelible imprint in the customer's, or even in the prospect's, mind. To do this, a business has to care about the customer or prospect experience and work continuously at enhancing it.

The service mentality starts with a vision of what you want your company to be known for. Maybe you want customers and prospects to rave about the knowledge of your sales and service agents or about how helpful your agents are. You must have a vision in mind for how you want your business to be perceived. With this as a blueprint, you can begin recruiting and training your staff to execute this vision.

Your employees are one of your greatest assets. If you expect them to execute on your vision, you must share and remind them of what it is at every turn. Don't forget that a service mindset should not just exist where there is customer-employee or prospect-employee interaction. Encourage departments to adopt a service mentality when it comes to interacting with each other. When recruiting new employees, look for candidates who exemplify a commitment to superior customer service. Make sure there is training and coaching for both new and existing employees.

To deliver on service, your company must have training for your employees in place. If you don't have the resources to hire a full-time trainer, consider purchasing online learning modules for your employees or having a speaker come in whenever the budget allows to coach and discuss this with your staff. Online learning modules may be a great way to assess how your staff is measuring up to expectations. Consider options that are fun for your employees and that offer assessments and reporting so you can review agent performance and see where deficiencies exist.

Gathering feedback is an important component of enhancing the service your business provides. You'll want to have a means of soliciting customer or prospect feedback so you can determine if your business is delivering on the service goals and mission you've established. Don't neglect employee feedback. You'll want to understand what's working and what's not within the company. Use this information to develop your training program so you can make your business a force with which to be reckoned.