Lesson 3: The Second Critical Element – Defined in Your Organization

The Second Critical Element – Defined in Your Organization

If you work for a company that enforces wearing safety gear, or reminds you to return your phones calls within 24 hours, then you are working with standards. Our customers also tell us what their standards are.

In this lesson, you’ll consider what standards are. You will also think about how they are (or should be) defined by your organization.  See an example in this video below

Our Standards

Standards are helpful because they let us know what is expected of us. They also tell us what we have to do in order for our work to be considered satisfactory by our supervisors or managers.

Standards also need to meet the expectations of our customers, while still being reasonable. The customer may feel that the phone should be answered on the first ring, but the company may have a standard of two or three rings. Since this is pretty close to what the customer expects, it might be considered close enough. However, we should make certain that our standards are meeting or exceeding the expectations of our customers. The only way to do this is to ask our customers, on an ongoing basis, if they are satisfied with the service.

In order to meet expectations, we need to know what the standards are. Here are some sample standards.

• If customers ask to have their repairs completed in 24 hours, and your standard turnaround is three days, you have to be clear on what you can do.
• If employees are driving company cars that they sign out as needed, a standard may be that the car is returned with a full gas tank.
• You can replace these with standards that actually fit with your organization. If you have not set standards yet, perhaps now is the time to do so.