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In his book “Legendary Service - The Key Is to Care” author Patrick Blanchard boldly states, “Ideal Service is meeting the customer's needs on a day-to-day basis by acting on the belief that service is important.”

He then provides a compelling example on the use of service statements to provide a clear definition of an organization's service vision and values. Used properly, service statements can help each team member to “have a clear vision of the kind of service they personally would like to deliver to their customer.” Blanchard also describes how managers can engage team members to contribute ideas for providing better customer service through the use of a customer service model based on the acronym ICARE.

Two Rivers Conferencing has several clients that utilize Blanchard's guidance in their strategies for enhancing the quality of customer service. They routinely conduct weekly Service Satisfaction Meetings with employees and managers identified as part of a “Customer Service Team.” This meeting is chaired by the client's Vice President of Sales & Service, with the company's President & CEO and selected members of his sales, product development and business operations team in attendance. Using this approach allows a company the opportunity to fully evaluate its service activities and product R&D in light of its service vision and values.

To be attentive is defined as thinking about or watching something carefully: paying careful attention to something. When we speak of being attentive we imagine a situation that is detailed and precise. This situation comes from possible planning and preparing in order to ensure the best possible outcome or scenario.

In Kenneth Blanchard's book “Legendary Service” we learn that attentiveness comes into play once an organization has clearly identified its service vision. According to the book “the next step is to get clear on who its customers are and what they want”.

By learning who your customers are and what they want you can better serve them. You must realize that your customers will vary and have specific preferences and needs according to their own business model. In our industry of conferencing we must clearly define who are customer is and how they plan to use our service in order to service them to the best of our ability. I would say this holds true in any industry. We must first define their specific needs, and then put the best possible solution in place to allow them to get the most from our solution.

The most successful organizations in the world are also those who apply the most rigor to reviewing results against plan and providing guidance and training to ensure plans are met. That which gets measured, gets done! Audio and web conferencing are great ways to perform these reviews with individuals and functional groups throughout your company in a way that provides uniform dissemination of information while eliminating the need for travel to accomplish these purposes. Some common areas where this could be applied include: