Enhancing customer service? Go fast and furious! When looking to revolutionize the way your bank approaches customer service, you might think it's best to slowly ease into things--to start with one group of employees and let the new initiatives flow to other departments. Actually, the opposite is usually true.

• Author: Kaufman, Ron

YOU'VE DECIDED IT'S TIME TO DO A COMPLETE CUSTOMER SERVICE OVERHAUL. You've spent hours with your c-level executives crafting a strategic plan and making sure your i's are dotted and your t's are crossed. The idea is to roll out the new plan in one area of your bank--for example, your call center--and get things under control there before you move on to the next department. Over time, as you get your strategy perfected and everyone buys in, you'll surely reap the benefits. Makes sense, right?

Sorry, but that's no way to start a revolution. When you're transforming a corporate culture to be more service-focused and effective, you have to move more boldly and get the message out to everyone quickly. You don't have time to let culture change drip down to the masses or bubble up from the bottom in one or two departments. You must cascade your transformational effort from the beginning in a much wider and deeper effort. Creating a superior service culture throughout an organization is like getting a new rocket into orbit. You need a massive and focused effort at the beginning to overcome the gravity of old attitudes and behaviors. And soon after your first new service successes, you need another enormous booster to keep momentum going and get into a sustainable orbit.

The effort is well worth the results. When people at all levels and departments throughout an organization step up together--at the same time--to deliver better service, then full engagement occurs and the culture "tips" into a new and better direction.

Of course, there will be obstacles along the way. It's how you deal with these obstacles that counts.

Companies sometimes receive push back from employees and even high-level leaders. Without the right framework for building an uplifting service culture, a company's transformation will slow to a halt and nothing much will change. Good customers will leave, and often high-performing employees will head for the door.

Here are a few lessons learned the hard way that will help you keep your efforts to uplift service on the right track.

1. Don't start only with customer-facing teams.

   Starting your service transformation with customer-facing team members might seem like the obvious move. But if your objective is to build an uplifting service culture, this approach can be very problematic. Because your people in customer-facing roles interact with customers daily, they already understand that service is important. They know that upset...