The customer wants help. An employee knows the answer, but can’t provide it without getting it approved by a supervisor. By the time that happens, the customer is frustrated.
Seems like it would be a customer service issue, not a leadership one.
Well, who came up with the approval process? Who allows employees to do what they do, and who can change that?
That’s where you start building a service culture. Your employees will try to deliver good service, but if you aren’t allowing them to do so, you’re holding your service back. The same can be said for live chat support as well as making phone calls to a company.
Here are some ways you can create a better service culture.
What You’ll Learn
- Why Service Culture Is About Leadership
- Setting Your Company Standards
- Allowing Your Employees to Help
- Using Live Chat To Improve Customer Service
- Reviewing What Your Customers Are Contacting You About
- Add Customer Service to Your Management Agenda
Why Service Culture Is About Leadership
When thinking about Customer Experience, people often think about the service that’s being provided by your support team. There’s also the marketing, orders, billing, and more that can affect your customer.
Your employees should all work toward delivering the best Customer Experience; otherwise, you’ll see hiccups in your service. Maybe a support member gives a customer false hope by offering an exchange, but your warehouse doesn’t allow it.
As a leader, you want to ensure your employees know your standards.
According to Medallia’s 2026 State of Customer Experience research, 66% of CX professionals believed customer experiences had improved over the past year. Meanwhile, 17% of consumers felt their experiences with businesses improved over the past year.
So there seems to be a disconnect between these numbers. Make sure you consider your customers and what they have to say.
Check out the 2026 U.S. customer service summary from Mark Sanborn to learn more about what business leaders are focusing on, training, customer feedback, and channels of communication.
Setting Your Company Standards
Saying, “provide great service” is a broad statement. Make sure your employees have standards they can follow when something doesn’t meet them.
Maybe you want your employees to do the following when something goes wrong:
- Apologize to the customer; do not make them repeat themselves
- Let them know what you are going to do and who they can talk to about the situation.
- If the delivery time changes, let them know.
- Ensure the issue is fixed, and the customer knows.
These are just some examples, but you want to outline what you want your employees to do. Make sure your company is able to meet those standards, as well. Having a response time that your team isn’t staffed to handle won’t provide great customer service either.
Allowing Your Employees to Help
Businesses need rules in place, but sometimes those rules can prevent employees from doing the right thing for a customer.
Let’s say a customer ordered a product, but received the wrong one. An employee can see what happened and explain to the customer that they can send a replacement. However, it will need to be approved by 3 people before they can send it out.
They may not know all of this, but what the customer knows is that you can’t fix something simple.
Allow your employees to do certain things, within reason. Fixing a bill, sending a replacement, or removing fees may be something your team can do without speaking to their superiors.
Allowing your managers to help employees who may make the wrong choice, but fall within your company’s guidelines, is helpful as well.
Allowing your employees to know what their expectations are, receive feedback, and be recognized when they are doing great can support employees and help build a healthier workplace experience, according to Gallup Employee Experience research.
Using Live Chat To Improve Customer Service
If you offer live chat support, make sure you are giving your customers what they need when they contact you. Many customers just want an answer so they can move on and know what you can do for them, instead of waiting on hold or sending emails back and forth.
Having live chat support can help if you allow your employees to do these things for your customers:
Are they able to access information to help your customers? If not, they will have to spend time looking up that information, which delays your customer service time.
Can your employees do things for customers, or do they have to speak to someone else for a quick answer? This can cause frustration, as they wait for someone to reply but don’t have control over it.
Can your employees send the chat to someone who can resolve the problem without starting over? This takes time away from your employees and makes customers repeat themselves, which can be frustrating.
Letting employees answer customers can help agents resolve some requests faster, but make sure you also have automated services. Your customers may not want to speak to someone and just want an answer to their question or how to complete a task.
Reviewing What Your Customers Are Contacting You About
Take the time to look at what your customers are reaching out to your company about. If there are issues that your customers are having that are outside of your service, take note of those and inform those who can resolve the issue.
Maybe customers are contacting you about delivery dates that aren’t accurate or change frequently. Your employees can apologize, but what can you do as a business to prevent it from happening?
As mentioned before, have a monthly meeting and ask these questions to ensure you are meeting your customers’ needs. Once you know what your customers need, you can assign an employee to make those changes and ensure they happen.
Add Customer Service to Your Management Agenda
If you want to improve your service, have your management discuss ways you can do so. There are many metrics that you can use to find areas where you are excelling or lacking. Some metrics to use are the number of follow-up contacts, the time it takes to resolve, feedback, and types of contacts.
Review these, as a whole, to see if you can identify where your customer service may be falling short, or where your team may need assistance.
Review some of your live chats or service calls to see where customers may be getting stuck and not being given the help they need.
Once you’ve made some changes, let your team know what you changed, and why.
