The 3Rs

It would have been incredibly difficult to rally the 40,000 employees of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia to deliver better service without a clear, compelling, and memorable framework. The 3Rs enabled Mark to collapse and summarize my main research findings into three memorable dimensions of service quality.

Responsiveness: It’s about speed and positivity, and it’s also about keeping the customer informed, giving them conative control, reducing customer effort, and showing a willingness to help.

Relationships: Delivering caring, personalized attention to others. It’s essentially about asking the customer questions and listening carefully, making them feel important and giving them your undivided attention.

Reliability: The ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately. Reliability includes educating employees and supporting their ability to convey confidence to and foster trust in the customer. It’s about competence, taking ownership, providing a minimum level of quality, and handling customers’ problems when they arise.

If you don’t have a service framework embedded in your workplace, give the 3Rs a chance. While nothing in life is guaranteed, the probability is that this framework will make a difference.