Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Excellence for Our Customers - Name Badges

This is a copy of an email sent by our most senior manager to all staff of the organisation I work for this week. I have highlighted the bit I enjoyed most. I like to think of all these highly paid people sitting in meetings discussing at length what should go on name badges. Personally,I am sure I would never have managed to come up with the solution they did, and that is clearly why they are paid a six figure salary and I am not.

Excellence for Our Customers - Name Badges.


In ‘Our Plan for Putting the Customer First’ we have two specific standards around being identifiable to our customers. We agreed that we will ‘wear staff badges and show proof of our identity when appropriate’. We also agreed that we will ‘answer calls within five rings clearly stating our name and where we work’.



One of our services has recently been assessed against the Charter Mark Standard for Customer Service Excellence. During the assessment it became apparent that the requirement is for staff to be ‘uniquely identifiable’ rather than just identifiable as staff, so a badge that simply says ‘staff’ is not helpful. We have to be identifiable so that we can be accountable for the good things as much as anything else.



For some years we have had a variety of staff badges and having received the Charter Mark assessment it is now timely to review this practice.



The choice for staff name badges is now:

· first name only, i.e. ‘Ingrid’

· first name and surname, i.e. ‘Ingrid Mercer’


This preference has been agreed because it is the practice adopted by most public facing organisations and quite informal. We understand that people who deal with customers on a regular face to face basis may be concerned at sharing their full name and that is why the option to have first name only is available.



This is a further positive development in improving our customer service and putting the needs of the customer first. I therefore ask you to arrange for new badges to be provided for members of staff who require them.



I thank you once again for your support in improving customer service.



5 comments:

JoeinVegas said...

I think you would do very well at those meetings. I would like to suggest to your management that you receive a tremendous raise and start making decisions such as these on your own, thus saving the time of all of the people at such meetings. To whom would I address my suggestion?

Fire Byrd said...

Thank you JJ, for sorting that little one out for us all, yours pp
px

timesnewroman said...

Superb, and here was me thinking they just sat around doing fuck all! I take it back. Senior managers everywhere, you are doing a fabulous job and are worth every penny, ney more, of public money that you earn!

J.J said...

Thanks for the vote of confidence Joe.I would enjoy the opportunity to decide what should be on name badges. Our star signs perhaps???

Pixie, just a pleasure - I am sure your organisation could learn from ours.

Jim, you are so right. I can now more fully appreciate why our chief exec's are paid more than the Prime Minister. I can't imagine Gordon coming up with such an imaginative solution to the thorny question of what should be written on name badges.

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