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Sustaining Knock Your Socks Off Service
by Thomas K. Connellan and Ron Zemke; American Management Association, 1993

Although not billed as a book about performance management, Sustaining Knock Your Socks Off Service by Connellan and Zemke discusses in detail performance management basics such as goal setting, feedback, measuring performance, and recognition and rewards. (The last ten chapters alone address feedback and recognition!) It includes many examples of how private sector organizations establish successful customer service systems. Most of the book's ideas and information can be applied easily to the public sector.

• Guiding Elements of Customer Service
• Setting Performance Management Goals
• Feedback and Rewards

Guiding Elements of Customer Service. For instance, the authors submit that the two guiding elements of customer service systems are goals and feedback. Goals give people direction; feedback tells them if they're on course. Goals and results must be continuously compared in order to improve performance. Feedback is described as the process of measuring, recording, comparing, and reporting differences between goals and results.

Setting Performance Management Goals. The authors also advise that the first step in setting performance measures and goals is to ask the customers what they think is important. Customer opinion should drive goal setting and measurement.

Does this apply to the Federal Government? You bet it does! The Federal Government not only has 300 million customers to satisfy, but agencies also meet the goal set by the President's Executive Order 12862, Setting Customer Service Standards, which requires agencies to offer customer service that is equal to the best in business.

Connellan and Zemke present some sage advice for setting standards and goals that agencies would do well to heed when setting their own organizational, team, and individual customer service goals. They point out that goals must be "relevant, realistic, understandable, measurable, believable, and achievable." They also explain that if the probability of achieving a goal is too high or too low, employee motivation to reach that goal will be low.

Feedback and Rewards . The second half of the book discusses feedback and rewards. The authors give excellent advice on how to use feedback to motivate, develop, and inform employees. Of particular interest to incentive awards program managers is the concept of motivational feedback. Motivational feedback is feedback that is used as performance reinforcement. When employees do something right, their behavior or performance should be reinforced through the use of formal and informal, monetary and nonmonetary recognition. By using high-impact positive reinforcement to recognize desired performance, managers can show employees that high-quality customer service is valued by the organization.

"If you set a standard and a goal; if you involve individuals or teams in setting their targets; if you empower individuals and teams to make decisions on their own; if you combine goal setting with measurement of customer satisfaction tracked back to both individuals and teams; if you add positive coaching; if you celebrate progress; and if you use regular positive reinforcement for the right set of behaviors, then goal setting is a powerful, positive tool for sustaining Knock Your Socks Off Service."

Originally published on October 1994.