Measuring customer service

Here are five tips to measure and improve your service:

1. Ask team members, "On a customer service scale of 1 to 10, where do you think we rate?" Then ask, "What do we have to do to move closer to 10?"

2. Have one-on-one meetings with customers solely to listen to their impressions and concerns of your service level.

3. Make sure team members are asking customers about your service and about things that you could provide for them.

4. All questions to customers and team members should be open-ended, such as, "What could we have done to make this a better experience for you?"

5. Create a 4x6 card with this wording, "I had to say 'No' to a customer today because we can't/don't/won't ... " Team members fill out the rest of this form when a customer service challenge presents itself. Discuss these in meetings where the team is discussing how to achieve customer service excellence. Future team member empowerment steps should result from this discussion.