I have to create a customer service manual and have never done anything like this. Does anyone have any ideas? Do they make software that would assist in this?

I am sure that they do. I created a customer service manual for my company and it was created from scratch. I formatted all our Business processes - containing screen prints etc, all our information about the company, all info that pertains to the department - phones and usage of, computers and usage of, lunches, breaks, vacations, company policies, department conduct etc.

It took a long time but it was well worth it.

Using Word Doc. Is acceptable. Using headings that pertain to your business.
May I suggest not presenting it until you have thought of EVERYTHING!
Keep a file or note book the first few months of things to add. There will always be new situations to take into consideration, but the bulk of it will be accomplished.
New reminders present them selves daily.

Take your time. Its hard to go back and then redistribute a new manual to your staff. They would end up with several copies and not take it as seriously.

Cheers-

Hi! Just pitching in. In case you are asking for the content, I guess the following would help:
1. Quality Policy
2. Value Dimensions (In your business, what do customers expect and require?)
3. Service Principles (Guiding principles that your employees should live by in servicing customers)
3. General Guidelines (covers common courtesy, office decorum, punctuality)
4. Service Protocols (behavioural guidelines in processing transactions)
5. Handling Phone Calls (greetings and spiels and etiquette)
6. Handling Complaints (types of complaints and how to handle them)
7. Service Recovery (rebounding from bad service)

You may email me at rexdi@yahoo.com for further clarifications.

I created one for my department from scratch and updated other manuals for our supervisors and CSRs. We do ours through Word but have been changing them to html to make accessing specific pages very fast instead of scrolling through or flipping through lots of pages. I found that I started with a basic list of things and as you work on the manual you will think of additional items to cover. I would add a new page title as I thought of the subject.

You will also need to decide if the manual should be divided into categories (ex. phones, returns, attendance,etc.) or if you want to just alphabetize it by subject or page titles.

Good Luck and don't worry when it seems like you will never finish. This is normal and shows you are being thorough.

Hi raymond. Tried responding to your email but it could not get thru. I'm posting my reply here just in case you drop by.

1. Quality Statement - this provides the guiding policy of the organization concerning the organizations commitment towards providing quality service to its customers.
2. Value Dimensions - discussion on the dimension of service that are important to the customers or said differently quality values that customers look for in your organization such as efficiency, courtesy, accuracy, reliability, among others.
3. Service Principles - establish the belief systems that your organization abide to when it comes to customer service such as "The customer is king.", "All customers are valued customers." among others.
4. General Guidelines - covers guidelines on punctuality, common courtesy, office decorum.
5. Telephone Handling - these are spiels before, during, after taking a call.
6. Service protocols - these are behavioral guidelines "how and what to do" and sometimes dos and donts in delivering specific service.
7. Handling complaints - this includes classification of complaints (relationship, product, service delivery, policy, fraud, etc.), forms and channels of complaints (verbal, via phone, correspondence, email, etc.), procedure, and records retention
8. Service recovery - when and how do you make service recoveries. This refers to actions taken to repair damage relationship due to service failure..

Hope this helps.

Thanks for your reply. I wonder if it would be possible to see what your manual looks like? My boss suggested going online and trying to get ideas from others manuals, but most companies do not have them online, although I did find one and it was helpful, but I would like something to compare it to. Thanks agian for your help.

Hi Rexdi:

Am a new member in this forum.. and i have the same concerns on how to prepare a Customer Manual and on top of it .. organize a Customer Relationship Department. Am most interested in your inputs.

thank you.

sva

hi there,

I'm Salman Malik and am working as Manager Customer Services. I want to define KPI (Key Performance Indicators) to measure my staff performance. Can anybody help me in definig them ???? How to go about that???

Waiting for your replies

hi salman,

what are the roles of your staff ( Say like :)
> Front office
>Back office
>Technical / engg
>store

then you can decide on the kpi's

My staff is taking care of front and back office. moreover, I have a instrument processing unit which deals with the lodging and clearing of cheques and IBCAs.

the main task is the customer dealing and resolving their issues.

i haven't find any help in defing KPI as there is no KPI defined from Front And Back offices for customer servcies as the peformance cannot be quantified.

I need a complete outline of the duties of a customer service personnel

At Front Desk; they are dealing with the walk in customer and taking their requests/complaints pertaining to credit card.

At the Back Office; most of the paper work is being done and calls of the customers are being answered but it is not a call centre.

Moreover, the payment cheques are being processed and lodged for clearing and the issues related to that are being dealt.

Got a co-ordinator who is compling and maintaing all MISs.

Hi

I'm replying to the original thread regarding the manual. A word document is a great way to start. I used this and included "icons" at the bottom of each page which when clicked on allowed the individual to open up the relevant forms referred to in the procedure. The contents page also allowed them to flick straight to the procedure they needed. This worked so well I actually rolled out a Client version to our high net clients. The only problem I had was the size of the document. Within a six month period of going live it just got way to big. To accomodate the varied needs ( needed something for both internal support and client support ) we invested in Rightnow technology. Rightnow use a Q & A approach which is great for keeping things simple. It also allows for clients and staff to access the same site - Q&A's are setup for either external client visibility or internal staff visibility.
Just some thoughts to help you as you go.......

Hi all, am new but have not stopped reading all the useful information here. I also work in marketing and manage both the marketing and customer components of the organisation and have also been tasked to prepare a customer service manual. Is it possible for you to send me the manual on - makhakhe@wasa.co.ls