City of Philadelphia Celebrates Customer Service Week in a Big Way

Customer Service Week was a tremendous success! The conversations that took place during these trainings were meaningful and lead to very important questions and reframing of our customer service mentality.

During our first session, City employees and I deconstructed the role of customer service in creating a welcoming, responsive, connected city. We discussed this topic in great detail. What makes a welcoming city? Who is our customer and why are they customers, why not citizens? We talked about how to treat customers like you value their investment in our communities, workforce, and local economy. Our customers are what drives our city and we want to show them we appreciate them.

Public service means committing to and working for the people. Because of the nature of public service, an immense customer base and often limited resources can lead to disgruntled customers and equally frustrated city workers. That is why these workshops were geared towards training and development of the every day heroes who work directly with customers on a daily basis. These City employees came out to discuss the importance of quality customer service because they believe in their calling.

You may have seen my recent post on our second session. To recap, Darryll Adams, General Manager of the Ritz-Carlton, Philadelphia spoke to City employees about what it means to provide outstanding service. He talked about your attitude, appearance, and presentation all being a factor. He talked about choosing the right employees, with a customer-oriented mindset both on and off the job, and getting employees invested in the mission. Customer Service is directly connected to efficiency. In a cyclical way, when your employees are invested and believe in what they are doing they provide better services and the customer satisfaction rate increases dramatically.

Customer Service Week participants listen as Darryll Adams explains that a culture of customer service is not something you do at work, but rather a part of who you are in your everyday life.

Our thirds session, with Stacey Mosley of the Office of Innovation and Technology, covered open data. We went through what open data is, how we obtain and share it, and what practical uses it has in your department, particularly as it relates to customer service. Open data increases transparency. When residents, businesses, and visitors have more data, they are equipped to make better decisions. Open data can also reduce the amount of calls from customers looking for information that is public through open data and media can access information without a right to know request. All of these aspects of open data help make Philadelphia, more efficient and responsive to the needs of our customers.

In our final session, we talked about putting yourself in the shoes of your customer. We went through the process of defining your desired customer experience and did some brainstorming on what the customer experience model could be for the departments present at this session. Reading Terminal Market presented about their customer service model and how they developed it, and how it has helped them in creating a cohesive experience for all of their customers and vendors too. We closed by talking about what role social media can play in defining and enhancing the customer experience.

All of the Customer Service Week sessions were about training, brainstorming, and working together to provide the best interaction possible when customers work with their local government in Philadelphia. But this week was also about recognizing the great work of our very own every day heroes in Philadelphia. The customer service representatives on the front lines, helping people understand and navigate city government; these are the every day heroes. The City of Philadelphia celebrates all of the employees who directly impact the experience customers have with city government, these representatives are the first impression customers have of the City.

City services are directly related to quality of life concerns. Citizens and government need to work together to keep making this city cleaner, greener, and safer. That is what we are here to do, and we want to acknowledge and celebrate

City of Philadelphia employees talk about why customer service is important and how we can incorporate a customer-centric value system into our everyday work.

the success we have had so far, as we continue to improve our service standards.

Thank you to everyone who participated in Customer Service Week! We are looking forward to doing it again next year!