Lyons ShareCASE STUDY: Revenue Boosted 8% For 3 Consecutive Years with Winning Customer Service Strategy
Sep. 2024In Kansas City, Roosevelt Lyons, the division manager for one of the municipal governmentโs largest operating departments, faced the challenge of transforming a division struggling to meet its $12 million budget and notorious for poor customer service. Competing with the private sector, improving service quality to hundreds of daily customers was crucial. Roosevelt identified a lack of customer service standards. His personal experience highlighted this; he once stood at a facility's front desk for over eight minutes without acknowledgment. Staff professionalism was lacking, with unkempt uniforms and casual interactions. Recognizing the need for change, Roosevelt set a vision at the fall staff retreat: to emulate the exceptional service of Chick-fil-A. He worked with managers and supervisors to create customer service expectations suited to their environment, involving staff in the process. With new technology, uniforms, and training, Roosevelt knew breaking old habits required accountability. He introduced a secret shopper program to anonymously assess staff performance, revealing a low aggregate score of 69% across ten facilities. The findings created urgency among staff. Roosevelt noted, "The secret shopper program, along with 'Happy-or-Not' kiosks, became central to our improvement efforts. By the end of 2019, our Q4 scores reached 89.3%. During my tenure, we experienced average revenue growth of 8% for three consecutive years." Roosevelt fostered continuous improvement through individual coaching conversations and incentives. This combination of accountability, support, and clear vision transformed the divisionโs customer service culture, achieving impressive results. For further information, please contact Roosevelt Lyons at roosevelt@lyonsshare.org.