On Delivering Excellent Services

I had  co-worker come to me the other day asking for help. She had been tasked with writing an article for her division on how to "Deliver Excellent Service."   I love the way management phrases can sound cool but say nothing.  What exactly needs to be excellent to make the service excellent? The Coffee? The paint on the walls?  The way people dress?  The time to complete a task?  Everything?  If you always get folks what they want on time, is that excellent?  What specifically do you do try and be excellent?  How do you measure it? 

It seems a good start would be to both determine what it means to be excellent, and then come up with a plan on how to achieve these goals. Though,  this will be highly dependent on the kind of service being provided. Are there some more general behaviors that might be helpful for most anyone in a customer driven, support driven, or a service driven role?  Here's a few that I have used.

1. Exceed your customers expectations
• If you take your car in for new tires and an oil change,  and found that they have washed our car and given you an air freshener; your expectations have been exceeded. You'll probably never go anywhere else again.
• This requires understanding what your customers really want. 
2. Ensure that your team members are the most knowledgeable, motivated, and service driven people in the business. 
• Knowledgeable (Mastery) - Invest in training through classes, conferences, and 20% time. Keep a team of curious "A" players who constantly want to learn and grow.
• Motivated (Autonomy) - Give folks autonomy to choose their hours and tasks. Autonomy is very motivating.
• Service Driven (Purpose) - Maintain a mindset that it's a privilege to be asked by folks to help them.  Have folks focus on how they can be more service driven.  (Excellence Attitude)
3. The team succeeds or fails as a team.
•  Individual focused rewards such as bonuses or commissions drive individual competition which break apart the team. You need the team to cooperate so incentives must be split evenly across the whole team.   (Think Fire department, not Car Dealership)
• Focus the team on the problem and let them choose ways to be excellent. The team is empowered to accomplish goal sin the way that works best for them.