Service Excellence: Training the Habit of Excellence inside your Service Company

In our day-to-day lives we all have habits.  Sometimes we try to break negative habits like biting our fingernails or we may try to sustain good habits like keeping an exercise regimen. The same is true inside of an independent contracting company in the industry of HVAC, plumbing, or electrical.  Every company team must take time to evaluate what habits they are developing in their business because whether managers or employees see it or not—there are habits.  Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher and teacher, had this to say about the connection between excellence and habit-forming behaviors;

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.”

The same holds true for training and solidifying the habit of service excellence in companies today:

• Habits require a consistent training period for development– According to Psychological research it takes about 2 months or around 66 days to form a new habit.  When a company has solid standards of performance and service then new coworkers and employees will quickly pick up the standards of excellence set by their team.  It is also vital that a company be consistent with their message of service excellence to both employees and clients.  Service should be at “tip-top” performance no matter what day of the week, time of the year, or customer that your company is working with.
• Once habits “set in” they become second nature and are hard to break– Excellent service standards as well as efficient systems and procedures are the habits that you want to have “set in” inside your service company.  Just as it takes careful training and development to form a new habit, it also takes conscious effort to break a habit.  When the habit of excellence sinks-in inside your service company, keep the momentum going.  Don’t stop “practicing what you preach” simply because service excellence takes a turn for the best; keep training, developing and strengthening the positive habit.
• Repetition creates habits; whether good or bad– It is important to put careful time and attention into the type of habit development you are training in yourself and your team members. Skipping steps or taking shortcuts may seem to save time in the short-run but it is important to remember that performing mediocre actions can easily become solidified habits over time.  Once a habit, whether good or bad, is solidified inside a team, members tend not to question the action steps that make up that habit.  Questions about habits within a company resurface when team leaders begin to revaluate or outside observers come in and see the routine. So be sure to make service excellence a repeated action in your service company to ensure that it becomes a positive, daily habit.

Just as Aristotle stated, “you are what you repeatedly do;” your business is a product of habits established within the company team. What topics and procedures does your business value and train team members on? How consistently does this training take place? Is it long enough to form the habit of excellence?  While you’re revisiting these areas of your business, allow the Service Excellence Training team to journey with you.  We have great training resources for developing the standard of service excellence that you and your service company team are capable of achieving.  Here at Service Excellence Training, we turn learning into earning!

Source

-Resource curated by Whitney Stewart of Service Excellence Training.