The RATER Model was created by professors Valarie Zeithaml, A. Parasuraman, and Leonard Berry, and published in their 1990 book, “Delivering Quality Service.”

The book provides a series of questions to help companies score their level of customer service based on the following scale:

• Responsiveness
• Assurance
• Tangibles
• Empathy
• Reliability

Although the RATER scoring system was developed as a customer service measurement tool, the fundamentals apply equally well to you as an employee.

Responsiveness:

It’s my personal opinion that, in customer service, the most important requirement is Responsiveness. It’s the price of entry so to speak. If you aren’t responsive you have one heck of a battle on your hands to try and deliver exceptional service. Responsiveness sets the tone for how you, as a client or prospect, are being “received”. We’ve all experienced the situation where we walk into an office or a retail outlet and the person behind the counter is obviously busy working on paperwork or the computer and takes 30 to 45 seconds to acknowledge you and even say “I’ll be with you in a minute.” Those are long 30 or 45 seconds. We live in a world of immediate gratification and having to wait for recognition that they are even aware you are there is painful.

Now, let’s translate Responsiveness to your job. If you are like me, you know someone who just seems to never get back to you. It could be a peer or maybe someone in a different department altogether. It’s not so much that they are ignoring you, you know they are busy, it’s just that it takes days to get even an acknowledgment and you sometimes wonder if they ever got your email or voicemail. How does that make you feel?

If you want to build a reputation for serving others, you need to be responsive when they come to you. Send “I got it” messages back right away with an expectation on when you can look at it. If the delay will be long, ask if that is acceptable. Don’t just do this for your boss. Do it for “everyone”.

I took on a new role one time in procurement and vendor management for a large IT department. It was amazing the positive feedback I received for just responding and acknowledging people. Apparently my predecessor was one of those people that kept things close to his chest until 1) he had time and 2) the problem or question was fully resolved, which could some times take days. Pretty easy shoes to fill on the responsiveness side and obviously fully appreciated.

Assurance:

Within the customer service world, Assurance is all about the confidence the person has in the products or solutions they are offering. Imagine a scenario where you are looking for say, a real-estate agent. You have two that have been highly recommended to you by friends so you choose to interview both before making a decision. The first one talks about the market, the certainty they have in the value of your home and their ability help you find a home based on your criteria. The second talks about how they’ve been doing this for a long time and how you should trust that they will do right by you. Both are confident but one assures you and makes you feel comfortable that they understand you and your particular situation. They have given you assurances that you are in the right hands. The difference isn’t subtle. One gets to know you, your situation and then assures you they will apply their knowledge to what will work for you. The other gives you generic platitudes – it’s an empty promise to get things done.

Once again, let’s translate this to requests or assignments you get at work. You can say everything from “I think I can do this” to “I got it” and it all sounds the same. To give real assurance, make sure you take the time to fully understand the issue, acknowledge and restate the issue, then provide a high level outline of what will happen next. One gives “real” assurance, the other feels fake. If you are going to say “I got it”, unless you have built a reputation with this person that they know they can stop thinking about it, follow that up with a high level comment about what will happen next and the expected turn around. That builds assurance instead of just hope.

Tangibles:

It seems pretty obvious what that means in the customer service world; how good are your products or services.

When it comes to you, your job and your reputation, tangibles take on the same meaning. How good are the deliverables you produce? Do you go the extra mile to make your papers, reports, research, and recommendations thorough and appealing? Everything you produce as part of your job is a deliverable and, yes, the little details matter.

Here’s an example. One place I worked, the manager asked his direct reports to complete their own annual performance evaluations and we would then jointly review them, make adjustments where necessary and then finalize them. The first year, I took my time, documented all my successes, challenges, goals, and achievements. It produced a rich discussion and lined things up for objectives and stretches for the next year. He didn’t change a thing. The second year, since he didn’t change a thing the previous year, I was more succinct and just summarized. The result produced the following comment: “this wasn’t your best effort”. What I said earlier bears repeating: everything you produce is a deliverable and needs to be done like it’s important and valuable to the recipient.

Empathy:

First, it makes sense to differentiate between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy involves feeling sorry for the other person. Empathy involves understanding how the other person feels.

When it comes to the people you serve and the people you work with, it’s important to be able to put yourself in their position and understand things from their point of view. It’s equally important that you be able to convey that you “get” where they are coming from and what’s important to them.

In one of my work environments, it was a heavy “entitlement” union environment. The workforce looked something like this. Ten percent enjoyed their jobs and performed well with a great attitude. Fifty percent went through the motions and did their jobs as best they could, they stayed for the money and the benefits but that was about it. Twenty five percent pretty much hated being there but couldn’t afford to leave. They did the bare minimum and sometimes a little less. The remaining fifteen percent saw it as their duty to challenge everything, be anti management and throw whatever roadblock up they could to do as little work as possible. As an example, the average time off excluding vacation for this last group was about 25 days a year. A discussion on why this was such a poisoned environment and why nothing was done about it is the topic of another conversation but, in short, it isn’t pretty. Suffice it to say, that it was an off-shore owned company that cared little to nothing about the employees and it showed. The union also made it almost impossible to deal with the bottom 15% that took up 95% of management’s time.

One of the people in the first group, the happy and productive one, approached me with a personal tragedy. At least it was a tragedy to her. Something happened that affected her emotionally and she needed some time off. Typically, I dealt with issues like this with the bottom 15% who were always making up excuses and trying to “get away” with stuff. This was different. This person was suffering emotionally and she was looking for support. Although I didn’t sympathize with her (in that the same experience would not have unbalanced me) I empathized with her. This was important and significant to her. I let her know that I understood that and that I would do everything in my power to make this easy for her.

Word got out. Even people in the bottom 15% were coming up to me telling me how appreciative they were of the way I handled it. All I did was empathize.

The need to empathize goes well beyond direct reports. It goes to peers, colleagues, and people all the way up and down the chain of command. Remember that how situations make “you” feel is not the same as how situations make others feel. Appreciate that everyone reacts differently and is affected by all kinds of personal circumstance. If it’s a big deal to them… it’s a big deal. Get over it and empathize.

Reliability:

This one is easy. How consistent are you at delivering what you promise? I worked with a guy who always over promised. He did that with clients and he did that with his staff. His promises became worthless.

I’ll be short on this one. If you can’t or don’t want to do something, say so. If you make a commitment to deliver, do it!