Johannesburg — STANDARD Bank has always treated customer service as a strategic priority. When that was recently re-emphasised, their provincial management in Gauteng faced a challenge. They knew bank service is one of those endemic problems which doesn't seem to go away completely. Quick fixes seldom last.

They recognised the complexity of the problem. For example, just about anything that happens in a branch can cause that favourite of all customer complaints -- long queues. It could be their processes; it could be the people; the problem could even have other sources. Solutions might involve operations, human resource management or even m arketing, albeit of an interactive nature.

From experience , management did have some initiatives in mind, but they felt they needed something more. They turned to the Wits Business School, which applied its service methodology, Service Leadership and Performance (SLP), which is implemented through associates at ServiceMIX.

The methodology focuses on delivering measurable improvements in customer service experiences. It is based on three principles -- c ustomers follow companies who lead in service; people perform well with clear service guidelines; and a company can make a memorable difference for customers with service r ecovery.

In practice, it involves specific steps. Specialised customer research techniques help organisations collect in-depth customer feedback about their service experiences -- the good, the bad and the ugly (and there are usually an abundance of all three). We call it customer e xperience r esearch.

From that feedback, a selected management team analyses the main service possibilities and problems that directly affect their customer experiences. Drawing on service management theory, the team plans and implements relevant actions in a structured way and follows through to ensure results.

Follow-through is guided by an emphasis on well-directed metrics and changed behaviours. It's a bottom-up way of achieving targeted change, because service is usually delivered by the humblest people in any organisation; not often by senior managers.

Although the change is focused on service issues, it can have a wider effect. Changed behaviours are catalysed when middle management becomes engaged in dealing effectively with their customers' realities. SLP challenges those managers to implement their best -- sometimes innovative -- ideas to address customer problems and possibilities.

Two years ago, the independent financial adviser d ivision of Clientele Life was under pressure to cope with the explosive growth in demand for their financial services from SA 's emerging market. Their response was to harness the drive of the rising stars in their middle management ranks. They chose SLP as the way to mobilise that potential.

Customer experience r esearch showed their service to be good, so their customer problems may seem somewhat mundane. SMS messages were not all getting through, at times causing people to miss presentations or payments. Some policy documents were not being received, leading to cancellations. Staff in the call c entre sometimes gave inconsistent answers to customers, leading to a lack of confidence in their other answers, too.

While the problems may seem mundane, the group came up with and implemented more than 20 different solutions. Some were obvious but necessary, such as addressing skills needs in-depth in the call centre.

Others addressed the root causes of problems innovatively, such as a number of cost-efficient ways to engage customers in ensuring their own SMS contact details on the customer database were current.

Perhaps the biggest benefit of Clientele's SLP was voiced by programme delegates themselves. For the first time, many had a sustained exposure to their own organisation which went well beyond the boundaries of their own department. Solving service problems usually involves a significant degree of cross-functional co-operation which helps the organisational jigsaw fit together more smoothly. At Clientele, this gave managers insight into a bigger service picture of their company, one they found motivating.

At Wits, its Centre for Learning, Teaching and Development supports the activities of both teaching faculty and staff from support departments across the university. Theirs is the challenge of how to motivate improved service from those support functions. They too brought their challenge to the Business School, and picked up on SLP. The result was Wits Service Excellence, a campaign across 30 departments which was also implemented in the vice-chancellor's office.

Each department was challenged to study their own customer research, confront what customers were saying about their service and make plans to address those service issues.

In the Wits environment there is an awareness of the financial needs of disadvantaged students for study assistance, so unlimited resources are not always available for each department to do what they see as necessary. This is a common problem in public sector service and with NGO s.

What's more, in the culture of a learning community such as Wits, it's not always easy to enforce follow-through plans by wielding a big stick, so results varied .

In most departments, a series of small changes were implemented, some of which drew customer comments -- for example, on how queues at access points to the campus did speed up noticeably. Some departments took the initiative more seriously: in one case, even leading to a presentation of their service excellence project at an international conference.

Wits departments did become much aware of who their customers were, their perspective on the service they do expect, and the need to address those expectations.

Bell Equipment understoo d its customers' expectations but, like Clientele, needed to update contact details on its customer database -- in its case for customer relationship management. That was just one issue that surfaced in its SLP programme.

Bell is primarily a manufacturer of off-road vehicles and equipment, but its strategic future will increasingly depend on service -- the after-sales revenue derived from its reliable machines, which these days may last as long as 15 years .

This, and increased international competition (Bell also operates globally), means more and more that the margins on machine sales are capped. There's more money to be made in equipment servicing and sale of spares.

Given its range of machines and dominant market share, the Bell spares dilemma presents a daunting challenge. It's a complex problem, one that is experienced by all competitors in the industry.

To address this strategically, Bell is bringing onstream a huge new distribution centre in Jet Park.

Predictably, the distribution centre is taking time to become fully functional. Meanwhile, there are customers on their doorstep who can't wait. They need those spares and the help of mechanics now in order to keep their machines operating.

With its historical service ethic, (driven by the Bell family themselves), Bell took the issue seriously and implemented SLP in its branch network.

The result was a series of varied actions in each of the regions. The main focus was to help staff cope with the fallout of the spares problem and still deliver good service to customers. This will bridge the gap until the distribution centre is fully operational.

Meanwhile, being able to take relevant action is giving managers in the regions a feeling that yes, they can make a difference.

That feeling is infectious. It lifts the spirits of the staff who have to deal with customers daily, so more and more customers are experiencing Bell people as having a can-do attitude.

It's the same feeling that also led to a significant improvement in service in Standard Bank branches in Gauteng.

SLP was implemented in more than 20 branches to deal with such diverse service issues as errors on customer statements and month-end queues for bulk banking.

What's emerged is an emphasis on a set of changed behaviours at branch level. For example, one such changed behaviour is a focus on follow-through to ensure customer satisfaction.

What's also being stressed is achieving measurable results. For more than 10 years, Standard Bank has tracked customer service levels through in-house customer research. Currently, the service scores in Gauteng are at a record high.

No one is saying whether that's due to SLP or because of the wider range of service initiatives that management did put in place.

We agree with that assessment. We know that service is a complex and wide-ranging issue which needs addressing on a broad basis.

Sid Cohn is programme leader for the Service Leadership Programme, and a part-time lecturer at Wits Business School.