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

Hans-W. Micklitz
weakened. Once best practice shows up in the overall regulation of safety of
services, the notion becomes a political device as well. This opening helps to
decouple the concept from its economic efficiency origins and to introduce
moral and value loaded ideas to it.
5. Best practice in BSI Code of practice for customer services
The recently adopted BS 8477:2007 ‘BSI Code of practice for customer
services’ is not particularly aiming at protecting consumer interests in
standardisation. However, it is the first attempt so far to law down horizontal
rules for customer services. The standard sets out essential principles for
establishing and maintaining effective customer service and provides
recommendations on applying these principles.
The Code contains four chapters:
(1) Customer service principles
• commitment,
• credibility,
• customer service culture,
• responsibility, resources,
• identification of customer service issues,
• customer service quality feed back systems,
• continual improvement,
• internal communication,
(2) Implementation at a structural level
• obligations of top management,
• obligations of customer service management,
• obligations of employees
(3) Operational recommendations
• provision of information to customers (general requirements, prepurchase
and purchase and delivery),
• customer interaction (accessibility, counter service, telephone
service, web-based service, customer appointment service),
• after sales (repairs),
• Customer service documentation (registering, billing, service
delivery record system, correction and corrective action).
(4) Maintenance of customer services principles
• Feedback systems (customer/employee feedback, audits,
benchmarking and complaints)
The Code of Practice sets out quite a number of innovative requirements which
heavily affect consumer issues, e.g. with regard to education and training and
with regard to the pre-contractual as well as the post-contractual stage. It relies
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