Tips for success

Experience from other organisations participating in Australian Service Excellence Standards (ASES) have found the following factors to be useful:

• Create a supportive environment: Be clear in your purpose and plan how it will occur.  It is important that the process benefits your organisation and enables it to better serve clients, partners or communities
• Gather a team together: Engagement in learning groups from broad areas across the organisation (including volunteers, board members, consumers, and clients) is highly valuable
• Use the self assessment tool: Record what you find in the self assessment workbook, using the examples of evidence and our website as a guide
• Action plan: This will help you clarify your priorities
• Go the extra mile: Record examples of where staff members have gone beyond expectations to meet user needs and improve the quality of delivery
• Compare yourselves with others: Contacting similar organisations to see how they approach different systems and measures can be useful
• Continuous improvement: ASES is not a one-off; it is an ongoing commitment to service improvement.  Remember that once achievement of a level in ASES is reached, a full external assessment is required every three years
• Celebrate success: Share success with your staff and customers through newsletters, posters, meetings and the media.