Services Standards: Defining the Core Consumer Elements ... - ANEC

Services Standards
horizontal that looks in depth at specific service areas, industries or
processes. Nine key requirements were set for the individual projects:
clarity of scope, focus on the European level, depth of planned work,
identification of potential barriers, identification of issues relating to
misunderstanding the nature of standardisation, involvement of all
relevant stakeholders, possibility to give rise to standardisation work at
European level, an assessment of the economic impact of the resulting
standards, in particular for SMEs. It seems as if the European
Commission would like to speed up the development of standards.
• In January 2006 DGs ENTR and MARKET issued standardisation
mandate M/378 259 to CEN in relation to customer contact centres. In this
respect the Commission accepted a further proposal of CEN presented
in its 2005 final report to M/340. The goal of the standard is to provide
quality of service requirements for customer contact centres, common to
all centres, which exist independent of service provider, service sector or
technical approach to the provision of the service. The mandate lays
down requirements on contract management and service and
performance management.
• In June 2006 DG ENTR received CEN’s project bid for programming
mandate M/371. It is in this bid where CEN’s working programme takes a
much clearer shape. The programme distinguishes between bottom up
(incremental development of standards as initiated by the member
organisations) and top-down (mandates from the Commission), between
horizontal (beyond sectors) and vertical (sector-specific) and between
business and consumer services.
• Two recent initiatives emerged out of the programmes which document
the need for more consistency in the standardisation on services. The
first is the establishment of a CEN Technical Board Working Group 192
examining a horizontal approach on the qualification on personnel
(October 2006), the second is the BSI project under mandate M/371 on a
feasibility study on cross-sectoral services standardisation.
The rough description of the interplay between the European Commission and
CEN demonstrates that progress is painstaking. Despite more than 20 years of
close cooperation, the European Commission remains dependent on CEN’s
organisational structure which is built on national standardisation organisations.
This is best reflected in the distinction between bottom-up and top-down
259 http://www.cenorm.be/cenorm/businessdomains/businessdomains/services/m3781.pdf.
77