Defining service standards
Service standards are usually defined in terms of:
timeliness
accuracy
appropriateness
Timeliness
‘Delivery in three days’ or ‘calls answered in 20 seconds’ are phrases that give the essence of a service standard that involves a timeline.
These statements need to be defined precisely before they can be considered as true service standards. ‘When does the clock start?’, ‘Are we expecting 100% success in the timeframe?’, ‘Is measurement based on working days or calendar days?’, ‘Does this apply to all locations worldwide?’ and ‘Does this apply 24 hours/day, 7 days/week?’ are some of the questions that have to be asked in the process of defining the standard.
So an initial definition of ‘answer the phone within three rings’ may be implemented as ‘Between 8am and 6pm on workdays, 95% of calls will be answered by a human in 15 seconds and 100% in 40 seconds’.
Similarly, an initial definition of ‘delivery within two days’ could become ‘For addresses in the UK mainland, parcels will be delivered two working days after receipt of the order’.