In June 2020, shortly after he was sworn in as chief of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg (North Carolina) Police Department (CMPD), Johnny Jennings had an epiphany: Adopting the hospitality industry’s customer service approach could significantly enhance the CMPD’s services and community relations.

What sparked this idea was a visit to a local restaurant, where the quality of the food and the attentive, friendly service created a very positive experience. Realizing that law enforcement was also a customer service profession, Chief Jennings thought that his department could learn a few things from hospitality providers who are dedicated to making people feel satisfied and well taken care of. Though the CMPD had good relations in the city of Charlotte and the surrounding Mecklenburg County, Jennings also realized that the times called for systemic changes, for police to look at law enforcement from a new angle—to reimagine policing. “We don’t serve hamburgers, we serve safety,” he said, “but we can do this in a way that gives people a good experience, even makes their day.”

To help the CMPD integrate customer service values into the department’s culture, Chief Jennings hired John DiJulius, a customer experience and branding consultant who works with corporations, hotel groups, and banks.

For more than a year, CMPD staff—sworn and civilian—worked with DiJulius in focus groups and workshops to develop a program that would apply the best practices of the hospitality industry to the work of everybody in the department. To gain insights from the public, they also worked with community members to reevaluate their policies and procedures and met regularly with the city council. The CMPD also worked with national organizations such as Campaign Zero, which is dedicated to identifying changes that will support more positive outcomes in police interactions.

A Systemic Program With Always and Nevers

The result was CMPD Serves, a systemic program of service focusing on the “customer,” who is defined as every individual CMPD interacts with.

Chief Jennings emphasizes that CMPD Serves is not just a slogan, but a comprehensive program based on three pillars that support nonnegotiable behavioral standards: empathize, educate, and exceed. These principles underlie CMPD Serves’ customer experience action statement: “Always leave a positive impression that will earn a genuine thank you.” They are further supported by a collection of specific actions required of all personnel—what the department calls “Always” and “Nevers.”

An example of a Never is to refrain from saying no if the situation is one in which the officer can use an alternative to make the conversation more positive. An Always is to remember that you are always on stage. This applies to appearance, body-worn camera (BWC) recordings, and any other time CMPD employees are representing the department.

To facilitate adoption of these behavioral guidelines, the staff was provided with scripts that can be used in various situations.

Built by CMPD for CMPD

Asked how they built the CMPD Serves program, Chief Jennings says that after DiJulius helped establish the framework, the employees worked together in focus groups. “By discussing it with our staff, they got the feeling of what we wanted to accomplish, and we got their input,” he said. “The things our people came up with were similar, but often used wording more acceptable to our employees. That gave them ownership of these requirements.”

After a year in development, CMPD Serves kicked off in June 2021, when training started. Three CMPD employees, who had earned certification from the Customer Experience Executives Academy (CXEA) in Cleveland, Ohio, became leaders of the program, playing a major role in the development of the curriculum and in training the rest of the department. By March 2022, all 2,500 CMPD employees, sworn and civilian, had received the CMPD Serves training, and it continues to be given in new employee orientations as well as at the CMPD Police Academy.

Challenges and Benefits

As with most innovative ideas, CMPD Serves was met with some pushback. Chief Jennings expected some people to be skeptical — officers, as well as outsiders. But he soon realized that the problem was a lack of understanding of what CMPD Serves actually means. As officers trained and experienced the benefits of the program, they began to support it enthusiastically.

One example Chief Jennings cited was of an officer who was vocal in his criticism. His BWC footage from a traffic stop showed that, although he went by the guidelines step by step, he did so in a sarcastic manner indicating he didn’t really believe the words he was saying. At the end of the interaction, the officer was shocked to be thanked despite his sarcasm. Said Jennings, “This was a reaction he’d never had before, and he couldn’t wait to tell us about it. He is now a firm believer in the approach.”

Chief Jennings emphasizes that CMPD Serves is not meant as a criticism of how the department worked before. “Our staff did a good job before,” he said. “This is a way to do it even better, by being more intentional and focused on the people we interact with. And we’re hearing ‘Wow, we really needed this’ from our staff. The public likes it, too. Even our harshest and most vocal critics have become supporters.”

One reason for the community’s continuing support is that even before CMPD Serves was implemented, 97 percent of officer interactions did not involve force or result in an arrest. So, the department had the trust of the community at the outset.

Communication and Recognition

In describing the staff’s support, Chief Jennings emphasizes that frequent, clear communication is critical to a program like this, and that the department is making transparency a priority. He also maintains that implementation must be backed up with recognition and rewards. “We review bodycam footage to look for officers providing excellent service. Though we audited BWC in the past, we were only looking for officers doing something wrong. Now we’re looking for officers making somebody’s day and creating a good impression for our department.”

To date, the department has awarded more than 150 Acts of Excellence and 4,300 BWC tags for positive interactions in de-escalation, community engagement, and other actions that went “above and beyond.”

Officer Mental, Physical, and Financial Wellness

Because officers must be mentally and physically healthy to provide exceptional service, their wellness is another focus for CMPD Serves. The department is partnering with the city to support a clinic at which first responders can get physical exams, stress tests, and/or mental health support. Financial health is another concern, and the CMPD provides financial wellness training and planning seminars. They are introducing differential pay rates for different shifts as well, with increases for the second and third shifts, which are night and overnight duties.

When asked how another agency might start a similar program, Chief Jennings said that the CMPD would be glad to make a presentation of what they did, but that every department has to create a program that fits its unique needs. It should also be built by its own people to get buy-in and be successful. He also encourages other departments to consider new approaches. “These times call for change,” he said. “Even if we feel sure that we are serving our communities well, we should never stop looking for ways to do even better.”

You can see Chief Jennings’s presentation of CMPD Serves at “Making an Impact: Building Community Trust Through Customer Service.”

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