30-day plan for your customer service

How to use this plan

1. Appoint one coordinator

   Usually the owner or manager. The coordinator schedules the tasks, keeps this plan up to date and chairs the weekly meeting.

2. Divide the roles

   Fill in below who has which role. In a small business one person often has several roles; that is fine, as long as it is clear.

3. Put the fixed times on the calendar now

   Every week, a time to fill out the scorecard (about 15 minutes) and a 15-minute improvement meeting. On day 30, a check of about 45 minutes. How the scorecard and the meeting work is explained in Lesson 5.

4. Work week by week

   Only start a new week once the main points under “Done when” for the previous week have been met. Letting a week run over is better than introducing everything halfway.

Week 1: baseline and basic agreements

Goal: know how your customer contact works now, before you change anything. The explanation is in Lesson 1; you work with the customer contact audit.

Done when

• Seven days of requests are in the audit, including those from busy times and from outside business hours.
• You know how many unique requests you received and what share went unanswered.
• Target times have been agreed that the team thinks are achievable.
• The baseline is the first row in the scorecard.

Week 2: phone and callbacks

Goal: every call is answered or called back according to a fixed process. The explanation is in Lesson 2; the scripts are in Phone scripts and callback process.

Done when

• Everyone who answers the phone uses the same greeting and asks the same basic questions.
• Every missed call goes on the callback list the same day, with an owner.
• There is a written escalation rule that the team knows.
• The callback rate is in the scorecard for the first time.

Week 3: setting up WhatsApp Business

Goal: messages are followed up quickly, consistently and visibly. You use the free WhatsApp Business app on a phone. The explanation is in Lesson 3; the texts are in WhatsApp Business: quick replies and labels.

Done when

• The business profile is complete and the business hours are correct.
• Anyone who sends a message outside business hours is automatically told when you will reply.
• The team uses the quick replies, and every chat that is still open has a label.
• For WhatsApp requests, you can count how many got a first response within the target time.

Week 4: appointments, follow-up and the weekly rhythm

Goal: every appointment and every open question has an owner and a date, and you discuss the figures every week. The explanation is in Lesson 4 and Lesson 5; you work with the appointments and follow-up list and the scorecard.

Done when

• Every open request is in one list, with status, owner and follow-up date.
• Someone checks every day which follow-ups were due today or earlier.
• There is an improvement log with at least one decision, with an owner and a review date.
• The draft service standard is with the team for discussion.

Day 30: the check

On day 30, take forty-five minutes to look back, with the whole team or at least with the regular staff.

1. Put the figures side by side

   Put the baseline next to weeks 2, 3 and 4 in the scorecard. Look at the counts and at the percentages.

2. Read the notes

   Which weeks had a holiday, a promotion, illness or an outage? Take that into account before you draw conclusions.

3. Assess the improvements

   Go through the improvement log: what worked, what did not, and what was never carried out?

4. Finalize the service standard

   Work in what the team said, add a version date and put up the core of it by the phone or the counter.

5. Choose the focus for next month

   One or two bottlenecks, no more. Write them in the improvement log.

Done when

• Besides the baseline, the scorecard has at least three completed weeks.
• For each key figure you can say whether it is better, the same or worse, and which other causes may play a part.
• The service standard has been finalized and the team knows it.
• The weekly meeting is on the calendar for the coming months.

After day 30: the regular rhythm

Warning signs

• The scorecard has not been filled out for two weeks in a row.
• Open follow-up grows three weeks in a row.
• The same bottleneck keeps coming back, without the improvement being carried out.
• The weekly meeting is skipped more often than it is held.

If you see one of these signs, make the system smaller rather than giving up on it: fewer figures and a shorter meeting, but every week. You can find all the lessons in the course Build a customer service system that never forgets a request.