Tag Archive for: Customer experience

At the risk of over simplifying a very complex topic, the customer service experience we deliver is often only the service we expect ourselves.

But, when providing a service in the moment it is easy to forget our own expectations.

CoachStation: Customer Service

I have recently had several discussions with friends and family regarding the service experiences received from various companies. Unfortunately, the service is often not what has been promised or committed to. Why is it that providing a standard basic experience seems to be a difficult thing to provide?

According to a report created by the Genesys group titled the Cost of Poor Customer Service, 73% of consumers end a relationship due to poor service.

Having worked across many industries and companies I have identified a few key factors that influence culture and ultimately the service provided.

1. Time management and the ability to prioritise the most important tasks and actions has become more difficult. This is the result of expectations set by companies and also individual people’s capabilities.

2. The culture itself significantly impacts on service delivery standards. If the expectations set by senior leadership are inconsistent with what is actually happening within the organisation, then employees are much more likely to follow what they see rather than what they are told. Well thought out policies, procedures and standards form the baseline for employees to bother to provide service that meets customer expectation at a minimum. However, good structure and standards are rarely enough on their own. Creating an environment where employees have a say and autonomy meets both the need to manage random situations and the human needs of fulfilment and contribution.

Consistency, context and clarity are incredibly important for employees to find their own way, within appropriate expectations.

3. Effective leadership that enables and develops capability across the whole team creates functional teamwork, greater care, accountability and ownership. In most cases these cannot simply be given, rather must become part of the team or company culture. Creating an environment where employees can feel a level of autonomy and ownership is key. This allows for dealing with customer needs without a ‘straight-jacket’ and rigid thinking.

4. Empathy matters! Customers and employees can feel when we don’t care or when indifference exists. There are few ‘tricks’ with this. To provide good service, an employee must attempt to understand the needs of the customer. To understand takes good questioning and listening skills. When we understand, we can solve problems. When we communicate well and solve problems, we succeed. Through this cycle, the employee feels the joy of contribution; the customer is satisfied; and the business feels the benefit.

A couple of years ago I spoke at a Customer Experience conference. My presentation was titled ‘Customer Experience Management from the Inside-Out‘. The core theme implied that if we want to genuinely positively impact customer experience and service standards, we must build a culture and understanding with all employees that the customer matters. Organisations should view Customer Experience as a culture, not a tool. I imagine everyone in the room knew this. I also believe that most of the attendees, all specialists in their fields, actively focus on internal culture, employee engagement and the relationship to customer service to some degree. Many of them may even measure this.

However, building a culture that is actively and meaningfully engaging both internal customers (your employees) and external customers should be the focus. This creates real value for all involved.

A favourite speaker of mine is Simon Sinek. He often focuses on the reasons why people, employees and leaders do what they do. In the video below Simon explains why employees should be your first priority.

I think it’s funny when we are given advice to always put the customer first. That means employees come second inherently if you’re going to put customer first. Great customer service companies actually care first about their own people, their employees and they expect their employees to care about their customers.

 

I have written previously that, effective leadership and employee engagement are critical factors in providing a culture where people want to work…and to provide more of what our customers want. Foundation values such as empowerment and employee satisfaction cannot be given to an individual or employee-base. However, creating an environment that has a higher propensity towards meeting these needs is possible.

Customers can tell within minutes—even seconds—whether they are dealing with an engaged and committed employee or a dissatisfied employee. This can greatly affect their willingness to engage in business, and ultimately impact a company’s profitability. Studies have shown that, great leaders are able to keep their highest performing employees and have four times the number of highly committed employees, which affects productivity.

Ken Blanchard notes that, it all starts with the leaders of the organization creating a motivating environment for their people to work in. When that happens, it’s no surprise when the workers go out of their way to serve their customers…and the good word gets around. The organization’s best salespeople are the customers they’re already serving. The end result of all of this good news is that the organization becomes sound financially.

So often we think business is all about making money and that customers are the most important thing.

But, if you don’t treat your employees well and give them a reason to come to work, they aren’t going to be motivated to give excellent service to your customers, and customers who aren’t treated well have lots of other places they can go.

Think of your organization as a stagecoach. Upper management might be the drivers of the stagecoach, but your people are the horses—the ones who create the forward movement. If the leaders get knocked out of the stagecoach, it keeps moving. But if something happens to the horses, everything comes to a screeching halt. So serve and help each other, and then reach out to your customers with the enthusiasm and desire and fabulous service that will make them raving fans…

…Don’t forget that without your people, you’re nothing.

There is often a gap between intent and behaviour when it comes to leadership, development, employee engagement, empowerment and cultures in many organisations.

It is always worth taking another look at the service being provided by your team members. Most importantly, is your culture and leadership team supporting and actively encouraging a good service experience? Lift the lid and take a look. You will be surprised what you find.

Steve Riddle was engaged in early 2013 to provide consulting, leadership and people development services and produce a report summarising the strengths and areas for improvement that existed at that time. The approach to undertake this review, prepare the report and provide recommendations was to engage stakeholders at all levels of the business including the contact centre, hardship, complaints teams and relevant people external to the centre. The original consultation period and subsequent review occurred between April and June 2013. A highly consultative and holistic approach was taken to review and examine various areas of the business, as highlighted in this document.

Background
The contact centre industry has been a key focus and part of business structure for many medium and large organisations for over 30 years. When designed and functioning correctly the centre acts as a hub for existing customers and potential clients to seek additional information; purchase or apply for new business; seek clarification regarding existing products; and often most importantly, act as a single point of customer contact, in an efficient and cost-effective manner.
In recent years however, the contact centre industry has changed to meet business needs and customer expectations. Technology creation and enhancements, higher levels of customer awareness and expectations of service standards, as well as greater maturity of business understanding of what contact centres can provide has meant a subtle shift has occurred. However, even with this shift, the fundamentals of contact centres remain the same. Lean processes, agent efficiency, effective leadership, modern technology and systems provide the basis to ensure that the optimal internal culture is established and external customers feel the difference in a positive way.
The National Customer Solutions Contact Centre (NCSC) within Toyota Finance Australia (TFA) has gone through significant cultural, personnel and technological change over the past 18 months. This has proven to be a significant challenge and also provided a rewarding outcome as the business begins the next phase of its transformation. Managing the myriad of inputs and influences within the contact centre environment is a constant experiment. Understanding the implications of decisions made and actions taken on other elements of the business is one of the key attributes that is driven within the Centre and led to much of the improvement and resultant success.

NCSC Focus, Results & Outputs

The Beginning: Consultant Review
I was engaged by Brisbane based IT consultancy firm, Business Aspect, to analyse several areas of the customer service operations.

  • Productivity
  • Key Performance Indicators
  • Costs
  • Resource levels and recruitment
  • Workforce Management
  • Reward and Recognition
  • Training and Development
  • Quality Measurement
  • Technology
  • Social Media
  • Staff engagement

In addition, data was provided by various sources including Team Leaders, Human Resources and Contact Centre leadership to provide context, basis and benchmarks for implementation and statistical analysis.
The report identified five core Focus Areas for the Contact Centre that impacted on the overall outcomes and experience of Toyota Finance customers:
1) Key Performance Indicators and Productivity
2) Workforce Management, Resourcing and Rostering
3) Technology and Self Service
4) Customer Interaction and Surveys
5) Employee Engagement and Development
Through discussion, data review and an awareness of current cultural and leadership challenges it was identified that these 5 focus areas could be further broken down into specific pillars I highlighted in the graphic below. These were considered to have the greatest impact on overall contact centre success.


The changes we made were significantly influenced by our improvements in technology, data and enhanced line of sight to what was happening in the business:

  • New Genesys telephony platform
  • Customer Surveys and Net Promoter Score
  • Quality Assurance Functionality and Role
  • Workforce management System and Role
  • Employee Surveys
  • Employee Focus Groups

Technology and systems enable growth, engagement and provide the information required to affect change.

Too often organisations implement new technology and expect that this, in itself, will be the game changer.

Technology certainly helps, however without maximising the opportunity through how the technology is applied and engaging our people to be the core part of implementation, we were almost certainly destined to fail or at best have a watered-down opportunity. This is why we focused much of our early attention on the cultural inputs and elements that were highlighted in the previous graphic.
One of the keys to knowing where to go in the future is to fully understand where you are now. Technology as an enabling and efficiency tool and data source is the core to gaining that understanding. The ‘tipping point’ for us came in February 2014 after technology enhancements in January.
Even simplistic sets of data allowed us to start to plan and create a strategy for our future. The challenge now became; how do we manage and collate this data and information into meaningful insights and trends.
We spent the first few months changing the culture to ensure that all of our team members had a sense of what the end goal looked like and to involve them as much as possible in the decision-making. This was achieved through data collection, analysis and staff development based on employee and customer feedback.

As with many things in life…a balance between often conflicting demands and beliefs had to be challenged.

Change and Growth

Customer Surveys
One of the keys to understanding what direction we needed to take was through identifying insights and trends from data. Until February of this year we had little data, few meaningful reports and were hamstrung in our decision making as a result. With few decisions, there were few actions.
That meant we had become very reactive and focused on the day-to-day management of the business, with little strategic direction or planning. Something needed to change and one of the most important steps was to better understand what our employees and customers thought about interacting and working with us.

How we went about changing this was to understand what our clients and customers want…by asking!

Customer Surveys provide strong numerical and empirical data for us to collate and identify trends that drive many of our actions and goals. Why do we bother to ask our key stakeholders? Quite simply, if we don’t ask we assume most things and most often get it wrong.
It has been my experience that without clarity we assume that our customers are looking for the same things we care about internally. This is often not the case. In Customer Experience it matters most how we make our customers feel.
Customer and Employee View
The customer survey we developed consists of 3 questions: Transactional Net promoter Score (NPS); First Call Resolution (FCR); and Brand Sentiment NPS.
It is important to note that I recognise the difference between Transactional NPS (i.e. customer sentiment based on a single interaction) and Brand Sentiment NPS (measuring a customers ‘overall’ sentiment of a brand or company), however the broad implications regarding scores apply.
Taking this into account, however, the consistent monthly results of 60+ remain an extremely worthy comparative outcome when compared to the banking and finance industry averages indicated by the vertical red line on the graph. When comparing the results over the period from March to August 2014, it is apparent that many of our customers feel a great deal of satisfaction when dealing with the Centre.


The results reflect the excellent efforts of many within the centre, based on our ability to access more robust reporting and develop our people accordingly.
The First Call Resolution (FCR) target of 85% has also been exceeded since exception of the customer surveys and continues to improve with results of 96% in the most recent months. Most importantly, when delving into customer surveys it was the verbatim comments, both positive and constructive, that provided the raw material for us to draw on and develop a series of strategies and actions as a result.
Employee Engagement & Focus Groups
Employee Survey Results 2013: Last years employee survey was conducted during the early stages of the Centre’s cultural shift. We were and remain, very conscious of the rapid change that was occurring and worked to ensure that our team members were participating in and communicated to regarding our progress, next steps and ultimate goals. Feedback received indicated that there was a level of cynicism regarding the Centre’s systems and processes, as well as a significant change to leadership personnel which was felt by many. Additionally, the shift in accountability and first-stage development of KPI’s better suited to each role took some time to be understood and accepted.
As a result of the survey a few initiatives were introduced, however the original Centre Review (delivered and approved for implementation in June 2013) and subsequent goals were already in play prior to the survey period.
It is important to ask our team members what is working well and what is not. An example of the type of information gathered was when I facilitated focus groups of 2-3 people in 2014, asking the following questions of our team members:
1. What is working well currently within our business? What areas of our business have improved over the past 6-12 months?
2. How do you feel about coming to work every morning?
3. What are the key areas of frustration for you?
4. What would you do to change your working world if there were no restrictions or limitations?
5. What could we do to improve our leadership and communication?
6. Do you have enough opportunities to contribute to decisions that affect you?
7. Do you understand how your role contributes to achieving business outcomes?
8. What questions do you have for me? What would you like to better understand about our business and/or the direction we are heading?
The sessions were discussion based and the idea was to speak with enough of our team to gauge what areas were working fine and what we need to do to make our business even better. Importantly, the actions and response from this information were key to performance improvement and engagement.

Consolidation and the Future

Whereas the recent consolidation and improvement of processes, technology, structure and metric/results has been substantial, there is still a way to go to meet the high expectations positioned for our team. One of the key challenges has been balancing the rapid change required with the ability to manage the processes and lead through expected employee engagement challenges. For the most part, this has been achieved to plan and has created genuine opportunity for the next 1-3 years.
Key gains and metric improvements have been realised, yet the next phase is about making the most of the solid base created via continued improved employee engagement initiatives and taking the Centre to another level of customer service, whilst also highlighting sales and retention opportunities. Ultimately, the focus is on continuing to develop a culture that exceeds expectations both internally and externally. Whereas many actions and goals have been identified to occur in FY15, many of them will continue into future years and be added to as the Centre culture develops and additional programs of work are identified.
In order to formalise a handover document for my replacement I created a Business Plan detailing what I would focus on if I remained in the role. The plan and its content remain fluid and should be reviewed and updated regularly.
Bus Plan Pic TFS 2014
The new leadership team have free reign to take action and set goals accordingly, however the opportunity to explain the past to understand the future is important. The key idea is that as an overall statement of intent and the execution of the goals and strategy will take the Contact Centre, Complaints and Hardship teams through its next phase, setting benchmarks within the industry. There is little doubt the baseline for this to occur has been established, however there is a genuine risk of plateauing as observed in the first half of 2014, stifling opportunity and momentum.
Ultimately, we are focused on continuing to develop a culture that exceeds expectations both internally and externally. The business plan highlights the specific strategies, goals, actions and tactics that will assist to realise this opportunity.

Outcomes and Results

All of this work needs to mean something by reflecting improvement in our KPI’s, metrics and results. Pleasingly this has been the case.
By comparing the results from August 2013 to August 2014, it is clear that improvement exists across all areas of our business; the Contact Centre, Hardship and Complaints.
CoachStation: Contact Centre Consulting and Business Improvement
We have seen ongoing incremental improvement in the abandonment rate from 6% in April to 2% in August. This exceeds the target and importantly is a new benchmark internally, with a greater likelihood to meet this consistently based on earlier decisions and actions. The comparative result of 42% abandoned rate in August 2013 highlights the improvement. Along with GOS, this is our single biggest indicator of consistency in service, particularly as we manage this metric at more granular levels and intervals also.
CoachStation: Contact Centre Development and Consulting
The Grade of Service (GOS) has improved dramatically from a historical result consistently under 20% and a low of 6% in August 2013. GOS remains our single most effective measure of how our contact centre is progressing, however must be taken into account with customer/employee survey and quality results to ensure we are not succeeding at the expense of those who matter the most, as highlighted earlier in this document.
CoachStation: Coantact Centre Consulting, Coaching and Improvement
Average Speed of Answer of 38 seconds in August compared to 114 seconds in April 2014 and 606 seconds in August 2013.
Non-phone customer contact outstanding items at end of month (Emails, Letters & Faxes) of < 92 from April onward, compared to 1,332 in October 2013. This has reduced calls and complaints significantly into the centre through First Call Resolution.
Agent Quality Assurance average score of 81% in September compared to 69% in April 2014. This is as a result of several initiatives; most specifically enhanced coaching and time spent developing our team members at Team Leader and Agent level.
The Hardship and Complaints teams continue to excel in improving the results, which have turned around since June 2013.
As an example, the early-stage or Internal Disputes Resolution complaints have seen significant improvement since June 2013, escalating during 2014. The comparison between June and September 2014 and the same period last year highlights the ongoing improvement:

  • 2013 – Complaint Resolution/delivery: 21 days = 87%%; 5 days = 70%; same day as received = 34%
  • June 2014 – Complaint Resolution/delivery: 21 days = 94%; 5 days = 72%; same day as received = 47%
  • Sept 2014 – Complaint Resolution/delivery: 21 days = 100%; 5 days = 89%; same day as received = 74%

The team are rightly very proud of their achievements, however opportunities remain. The ability to gain even greater consistency, continue to improve our technology; take recent people development initiatives even further; analyse and break down the ever-growing sets of data into meaningful trends and insights; ensuring our customer’s remain as highly satisfied as they currently are; and other initiatives as highlighted in this and other documents, are all required focus areas. The business is well-placed to make this a reality.
On a personal note I would like to acknowledge and thank the senior leadership team for their support and faith in making the original strategy and plans into a reality. I have mentioned many times that it is only due to the opportunity to review and impact the entire operation including policies; people & culture; personal and professional development; technology; systems and similar elements, that the gains have been as significant as they have.
Most importantly, it is the people in the Contact Centre, Hardship and Complaints teams who have been prepared to accept, buy into and ultimately apply the change that was (and remains) necessary. It is what we do day-to- day that matters the most! Thank you most sincerely to you all.
Steve Riddle
Director, CoachStation

Under the remit of my current contracted role as Head of Customer Service for Toyota Finance Australia, I recently attended an event in the Hunter Valley in Australia organised by Ashton Media titled Customer 360 Symposium. The opportunity to mingle and share ideas with like-minded professionals and customer focussed providers was genuinely excellent. There were many takeaways, some of which I felt it relevant to share via my blog as there are key points that relate to culture, leadership and creating an environment that encourages outstanding customer service.

I will present much of this as a series of questions, in some cases adding my own thoughts and comments indented in blue font in reply, as applicable. A core benefit of this type of event and my notes below, is the opportunity to be challenged and force reflection regarding our existing processes, practices and beliefs. Hopefully you will also be similarly stimulated.

Dr Melis Senova – Huddle Design

Has our leadership evolved as fast as our thinking?

I am not sure that the issue is how quickly our leadership has evolved or even our thinking. To me the difficulty has been developing effective leadership capability in practice and turning what we know into what we do.

Leaders – have discomfort with ambiguity = fear

We all struggle with ambiguity to some extent. The criticality of providing context and clarity is regularly missed in business. The assumption that our team members can simply pick up the intended message and/or interpret clearly is a challenge and one that must be overcome. Effective leaders provide the right messages with appropriate depth based on the individual employees need and comfort, not their own.

Inauthenticity – decreasing the gap between what we say and what we do. Have a sense of purpose.

Not all that is valuable can or should be measured.

I could not agree more with this. Accountability in all reas of expectation should be the norm in leadership, however many managers are comfortable focusing on the outputs, metrics and numbers that often exist. The ability and willingness to work through the inputs and intangibles of a role and person is more difficult…yet is where the genuine, sustainable growth and improvement comes in. I would argue if you have no interest to do this as a leader it is time to review your contribution and direction.

Solution seduction – know the difference between the solution space and the problem space – they are not the same thing!

 

Billy Butler – Dell

Technology has always been about enabling human potential – Michael Dell

Ask – what problem am I trying to solve?

 

Paul Smitton – Qantas

Authenticity is the key to customer satisfaction.

Yes it is. The difficulty is providing an authentic and ‘real’ experience no matter the channel of contact. Consistency, displaying empathy and authenticity go a long way to providing a customer experience that matters.

Personalised offerings – tailor to customer wants and history.

Deeper engagement that can directly or indirectly affect customer sentiment.

 

Karsten Fruechtl – Bain and Company

Advocacy cannot be managed by senior leadership alone

…and like compliance and customer service, it is not a designated team that is responsible to create outstanding customer experience opportunities. It is the responsibility of the whole organisation and is strongly aligned to depth and strength of culture.

Customer advocacy and employee advocacy go hand in hand

A personal favourite of mine. I spoke at a Customer Experience conference a few years ago and my topic was ‘Customer Experience: From the Inside Out’. Customer data is crucial and needs to be analysed to understand trends and insights. Once this is done however it is virtually impossible to make a difference with this information if the business does not have an engaged, caring and focused employee base. This is continually shifting however how our employees feel has a direct impact on how we make our customers feel.

Promoters typically generate more revenue and costs less to serve – NPS (Net Promoter Score) can be a predictor of customer behaviour.

Don’t ask for feedback unless you are prepared to listen and act on the results.

 

Michael Henderson – Cultures At Work

Culture now considered as risk management.

Culture is not the way we do things solely – it is how companies respond.

Employee surveys conducted by external parties are flawed thinking. Engagement surveys are questionable as they give people’s opinion of the culture…not what it actually is.

The high degree of subjectivity, confirmation bias, fear, avoidance and other factors that are prevalent in employee surveys is an ongoing challenge. The ability to measure culture remains challenging also however I have found one of the key tools to do so is 1:1 discussions with all of my team, no matter the role or level. Of course, the task of developing trust and comfort to ensure honesty and frankness exists is also prevalent but in my experience is more easily managed in a personal discussion-based situation. It is definitely more time-consuming but the benefits are significantly greater.

Remove silos – create relationships.

Development = individual personal development: can business grow if people don’t personally develop?

When developing my team I focus on them as people not as an employee. The role they have is relevant and regularly comes up in discussion however it is only one part of what each person does, is and wants to be. Most coaching opportunities come from the person filling the role, not from the role itself.

Human values = personal preference x cost of effort.

Customer’s expect efficiency – it is not a differentiator. Customers are hungry for empathy and creativity.

Not high tech – it’s high touch!

What do you think of the statements and themes from the symposium? Are they applicable to you? I would appreciate your comments.

Like many of you, I have spent some time over the past weeks reflecting on 2012 and planning for next year. As cliche’d as it may be, the years do seem to be passing more and more quickly, although I feel this is a reflection of our lifestyles and a symptom of the modern world. It has been a year of significant change for me, as I took the step to leave full-time employment and work full time in and on my consulting and leadership development businesses, CoachStation and Telework Management. Pleasingly, I have never been so comfortable and content with my current and future work situation.

Beyond my family, one of my great joys is writing and I have taken much pleasure from the blogs constructed in 2012. It dawned on me today that if our favourite music artists can take their best songs and make a compilation then there is nothing stopping me from doing the same…any excuse will do! CoachStation Leadership Blog HighlightsThis blog highlights some of the best ‘bits’ as highlighted by my readers and my personal favourite statements and points gleaned from this years CoachStation blogs. My first job out of school was in a radio station in Adelaide and like other stations, our catch-cry at the time was ‘Greatest Hits and Latest Memories’…a theme I will borrow for the moment as you read through my Greatest Hits. Enjoy!

Effective leadership is neither easy nor a given – it takes effort, practice, ongoing learning & persistence. The rewards that stem from being an effective leader are difficult to articulate or describe to someone who has never felt them. Read More: Leadership: It’s About You

Every individual has different expectations of themselves, their leader and the employer. Each team member brings different skills, values, biases, desires and other personal traits to their role. It is the leaders job to understand the employee well enough to blend business needs with personal needs. Read More: Expectation Setting – Who Cares?

I see managers rewarding and recognising employees based on the end result, with no regard as to how it was achieved…the ‘right’ journey will more often than not provide the ‘right’ result and the team culture, ethic and standard will be reinforced even further as a result. This point focuses on the ‘how’. Ultimately, the long-term culture and level of understanding benefits from this mindset. Read More: Leadership, The Coach and Coaching

Effective leaders ensure that they seek to understand both the planned outcomes and how their people are going to influence and drive all of the elements within the process to achieve that outcome. I often wonder what it is about processes that many managers have a need to see as entirely separate from their people…If we are not clear about what role our team member’s play in the overall project then the entire process change will likely fail. Read More: People and Process: Aligned or Loggerheads?

Many a plan or process has failed due to a lack of clear direction and early identification of the problem to be solved, leading to a poor concept of the strategies required. Read More: Strategic Thinking and Leadership

The very essential elements of leadership – the measure of effectiveness, credibility and judgment that provides an answer to leadership effectiveness actually comes from those you lead! Read More: Leadership Credibility: The Right To Lead?

The leader who is effective in their role recognises that connection between people occurs through more than just the words used.  An effective leader knows this intuitively and works hard to make sure relationships exist with meaning, even when there may not be an initial strong affiliation. Read More: The Positive Impact Of Connecting

Values are critical for both individuals and businesses. Values provide a base for alignment between yourself and the business that employs you. They allow an individual to feel connected and maintain a clear view of the reasons for doing what they do. Understanding what is important to you personally and at work also assists to motivate or re-clarify, providing direction. Read More: Developing and Empowering Leaders – Richard Branson (Pt 1)

Employ the right people, support and develop them and give them the freedom to make their own mistakes and revel in successes. Read More: Developing and Empowering Leaders – Richard Branson (Pt 2)

Unless your business sees Customer Experience as a culture, not a tool, then your customers will feel the pain of what is not being provided by your customer-facing employees. So often we think business is all about making money and that customers are the most important thing. But if you don’t treat your employees well and give them a reason to come to work, they aren’t going to be motivated to give excellent service to your customers, and customers who aren’t treated well have lots of other places they can go.Read More: 11 Key Leadership and Customer Experience Mantras

How are you choosing to challenge what has been done previously? Don’t accept the reasonable reasons from the past. Read More: Leadership @ Customer Experience Management Conference

Effective leadership and employee engagement are critical factors in providing a culture where people want to work…and to provide more of what our customers want. Building a culture that is actively and meaningfully engaging both internal customers (your employees) and external customers is more easily said than done. A genuinely effective customer experience approach requires a top-down strategy based on broad and extensive cultural change. Read More: Leadership, Employee Engagement and Customer Service

Trust: being trusted and trusting others is a great base to work from. Those who influence most recognise the need for trust and understand the nuances that enable trust to be built. In a real relationship trust cannot be faked. Read More: 360 View in 360 Words: Leadership and Influence

If you do not understand what each of your team member’s core values are, you could be potentially missing the ultimate success of growing and developing your team to be the best they can be. This could be impacting the business bottom line, morale, relationships and other key elements. Read More: Personal Values – One View

The argument of nature versus nurture to me is not the key question. The bigger question, no matter where or how you obtained your role, is: how effective are you as a leader? What I do know is that not all leaders by name are leaders in practice – a title does not make you a leader. Read More: 360 View in 360 Words: Leaders Are Born AND Made

When I reflect on my development, reading has been critical in providing avenues to challenge my thinking. It is my time. A safe and rewarding opportunity. I get to challenge myself with absolute frankness and honesty. My thoughts are between the words on the page and myself. Read More: How Important is Reading to Leadership and Development?

Having worked with many varied people and business cultures and recognising the similarities and differences, it is clear to me that many managers think training and development are the same thing…Having knowledge is one thing, applying this knowledge in a practical and discernible way that makes a difference, is quite another. Read More: Development and Training – Same, Same: Maybe Not?

Self-reflection, taking into account the many factors that influence us all is important for growth. Taking time to reflect provides a platform for improvement and awareness about what is going well and what you would like to change about who you are and what you do. Read More: Efficiency and Effectiveness – Leadership Impact

An organization’s senior leadership team has a significant impact on its employees‘ overall opinions of the company and engagement levels, which have been linked to both earnings per share and total shareholder return…An employee who is fully engaged today will not necessarily be in a year‘s time, or in a month for that matter. Read More: At Last We’re Engaged – Leading Your Team (Part 1)

A leader‘s ability to consistently demonstrate and apply relational skills has a direct correlation to the level of engagement an individual may feel. Providing genuine leadership is key. There appears to be a gap between what employees state is occurring and what leaders feel they are applying in reality. Data and surveys continually reflect the discrepancy between what leaders believe is occurring and what their team members state. Read More: At Last We’re Engaged – Leading Your Team (Part 2)

Developing soft-skills (or ‘hard skills’) requires effort, focus and self-awareness amongst other elements. Is this why the leadership skills that fall under this category are often the ones that are least practiced and improved. Is it fear? If  a leader asks the question of his or her team, they may not like nor be willing to acknowledge the answer. So is there a view for some leaders, based on fear, that it is best to not ask in the first place? Read More: The Current Challenge Of Leadership

My contention is, all kids have tremendous talents…and we squander them, pretty ruthlessly. So, I want to talk about education and I want to talk about creativity. My contention is that creativity is now as important in education as literacy and we should treat it with the same status…In the next 30 years, according to UNESCO, more people worldwide will be graduating through education than since the beginning of history. Read More: Sir Ken Robinson – Education, Our Kids and the Future

People are stretched in their roles, covering more work that previously may have been completed by others who have been made redundant and/or have never been replaced. Read More: Roles, Structure and Instinct

Middle managers are the ones that keep the cogs turning and ensure the job gets done, not the chief executive. They are often not getting the support or training required so that they can maximise operations, as more senior managers tend to get the company-sponsored education opportunities…more businesses need to look at how their middle managers can be supported if they are to effectively lead people and manage the success of operations. Read More: Leadership Training of Middle Managers

…and 2 Bonus quotes from my blogs written for and appearing on the Linked2Leadership site:

This is made even more complex by the fact that human beings are quite unpredictable and are certainly not static like most business data. We have emotional and psychological needs, wants, highs, lows and complexity. There are various aspects of our world today that seemingly conspire against consistency and predictability, but that is what makes leadership so exciting. Read More: On Leadership, Management and Effectively Using Data

Your employees will not necessarily ‘buy- into’ the values and philosophies of your company just because they are presented. In fact, if your team member’s see these values, mission statements and similar as being incongruent with what they see and feel every day, these tools can prove more damaging than not creating them at all. You are setting up false standards and expectations. Effective leaders, displaying the company values, primarily aligned to their own, provide significant power to your business. Unfortunately knowing this and taking appropriate action are not the same thing. Read More: How Leadership and Culture Impact Business Profit

I hope that these blog segments provide opportunity for you to delve deeper into thinking about your own situation and challenge your thinking, especially as we move into a new year – that is the core reason why I write. Similarly, I welcome your comments and feedback. I recently moved all of my blogs onto my company website and as a consequence lost all of the Tweets, LinkedIn referrals and other Social Media references, so please feel free to forward or share with others as you see fit.

I also hope you had a wonderful year and trust that 2013 will bring just as many ‘smash hits’ for you as this year has for me.

Providing a level of customer experience that ensures your customers ‘feel’ the difference between your business and competitors is crucial to success.

A key element to be able to make this a reality rather than a pipe-dream is how many of your employees and particularly leaders ‘live the reality’. Discussing customer experience (CE) as a core part of business culture genuinely reinforces the messages – but not if this is felt by a few, not the many. Effective business leaders should always know that they are building a culture and understanding with all employees that the customer matters. This cannot be achieved through empty words, sound bites or a shallow attempt at driving a customer-centric organisation.

CE can be incredibly complex and very simple at the same time. I wonder whether the proliferation of data and new technology is being used to best advantage. Whether we accept the implications of technology and the modern version of customer experience goes a long way to building a customer-centric culture. Taking meaningful steps based on a company-wide strategy that is reinforced through leadership, technology and action is core to starting to build a culture where the customer is seen as important.

An example can be seen where greater CE focus and recent technology has meant that many organisations have identified a need to be present in the Social Media space. This is often seen as a critical aspect of understanding and managing customers, however few organisations have a purposeful strategy of how Social Media fits into the rest of the organisation and CE strategy.

In 2012 customer service will become the “killer app.” Engaging customers today requires all stakeholders within the company to be committed. It also requires that organisations redefine (or repurpose) what the brand represents—internally and externally. (1)

I  equate this to my own observations which have been confirmed through external research over the years. After working in the call centre industry for over 15 years I was regularly surprised by the apparent desire to exceed customers expectations, yet the processes and business practices would often not lend themselves to supporting the strategy. Developing a strategy and understanding of what your business is trying to achieve through the gathering of CE data and insights is important before making decisions based on the data. Key questions to ask:

  • What does success look like?
  • How do you achieve improved results?
  • How do you establish the right culture to balance employee, customer and business needs?
  • How do you use the extensive quantities of data available to real advantage?
  • How do you create employee engagement, empowerment and buy-in that means your customers feel the benefit?

Data and insights in themselves offer little value. Collating and filtering CE data into meaningful trends is essential. Businesses typically are challenged in using data to advantage – it is a real skill and should be part of your process and strategy, but is not always the case. Usually a business measures itself through internal metrics, KRA’s and KPI’s, that make sense to the managers and employees (usually!). This is no more evident that in targets, metrics and measurements. For example, traditionally the typical call centre measurements consist of Grade of Service (GOS), Time To Answer and similar call-based metrics.  All very legitimate and logical, however there is one critical point that is being missed. The question to ask is:

Are these internal measurements the same standards and  expectations that your customers feel are the most important?

The answer is often an emphatic…No!

Unless your business sees Customer Experience as a culture, not a tool, then your customers will feel the pain of what is not being provided by your front-line team members. After spending several years in Customer Experience leadership, I am convinced that engagement, morale, culture, sub-cultures and the impact of leadership on these can be felt by all customers. An effective CE strategy has a core function to gather insights and data and use this information to develop Leaders and Team Leaders, drive process improvement and clarify direction.

CoachStation: Customer Measurement in Business Model

The link between providing a high level of consistent customer service and the satisfaction of your employees has been proven. Extending this concept further, an organisation’s employees are significantly influenced by the leaders within it. In a recent blog on this subject, Adrian Swinscoe wrote that:

Many businesses will look for process, system and technology fixes and assume that more and better internal communications or more surveys will increase engagement. It might. But, I don’t think there will be any guarantees with those type of initiatives.

It is a mistake to think that more data in itself will make the difference. Very few employees, who are the people in the actual position to make the difference, are even privy to this data, let alone provided with a summarised view that is presented in a way that makes sense and is usable. It is this point that is the most remarkable.

Greater technology advances, Big Data, information flow and accessibility are all the potential positives with modern Customer Experience Management. They are also its greatest flaw!

Unless your organisation can make sense of the incredibly vast amount of information and present it in such a way that your leaders can easily decipher the key insights / trends AND the leaders are skilled to be able to provide this information in a way that their team members will care about, then CE insights and data collection has little value.

CRM is as much a marketing tool as anything, but convincing your customers of your value proposition and making commitment to improve based on customer feedback, if not followed through by your leaders and front-line staff can be quite damaging. This negative sentiment can be felt internally amongst your team. If they are aware that insights and data collection is occurring, but there are no obvious and tangible changes or application, then frustration, disappointment and other negative reactions are likely.

The most interesting part of all of this, it is no different for your customers – they will also become frustrated if feedback is sought and then commitment to change is not followed up with action.

A simple way to view this aspect of CE – if you don’t want to know the answer, then don’t ask the question. I am not advocating that any business should ignore or not actively seek the customer view. Quite the opposite, in fact. What is clear though,  is that setting up a false set of expectations either internally with your employees and/or externally with your customers, that is not followed through in a way that the stakeholders ‘feel’ the difference, is often more damaging than not asking in the first place.

Adrian Swinscoe discusses the elements that align employee engagement to the customer experience, including a list of ‘basics’ that should be adhered to.  He also asks a very pertinent question that we all should know the answer to if we are serious about our people and customers.

How can we expect employees to take care of customers if the business does not trust, recognise, support and treat them well too? Much of employee engagement is about relationships. The relationship an employee has with their job, their colleagues, their customers and their organisation. And, relationships are all art and very little science.

So, let’s not sweep the art under the carpet and start getting better at it.

A focus on insights and development based on CEM has three major benefits, amongst other key points:

  1. You are able to learn about individual businesses processes, what is working well and what can be improved.
  2. Crucially, seeking Voice Of Customer and identifying themes enables you to know what your customers are thinking and saying about your business – not assuming to know how they feel.
  3. These insights can be used to design and run developmental programs at an individual and  team level, including workshops and 1:1 coaching, aligned to specific trends and customer needs.

Many of you will relate to the issues and culture described in this blog and that of Adrian’s. Some of you may even be living the experience now. But, as I have stated many times, knowing what is wrong with your business and doing something about it are not the same thing. The danger here, as with so many other critical factors in business, is that acknowledging flaws, both personally and organisationally is a difficult thing for most of us to do. The most effective leaders have developed a skillset and attitude of ongoing development and a willingness to influence culture. Part of this philosophy is the ability to see things for what they are, not what you would like it to be.

If you want to see change, you must lead for change.

If dissatisfied, speak up.

If your customers are unhappy, ask them why and what they would like to see differently – and take action to remedy.

Most importantly, don’t accept mediocrity! By actively challenging the status quo, you will take the first steps to influence change and differentiate yourself from other people and your business  from other organisations. Your employees will love your for it, and so will your customers.

References:

(1) The New Science of Rewards and Recognition: Transforming Your Business

The Link Between Customer Experience and Employee Engagement: More Art Than Science: Adrian Swinscoe

I attended last years IQPC Customer Experience Management Conference in Sydney and thoroughly enjoyed the content. I learned a lot.

There were many great speakers. Many of them focused on the what – meaning that I learned about tools, measurements, successes through data collection and customer platforms, amongst other aspects. I was invited to this year’s conference, including the opportunity to be a guest speaker during the opening day. I wanted to set a challenge to myself and the attendees with a pitch more aligned to the ‘how’:

• How do we achieve improved customer service results?
• How do we establish the right culture to balance employee, customer and business needs?
• How do we use the extensive quantities of data available to real advantage?
• How do we create employee engagement, empowerment and buy-in that means our customers feel the benefit?
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My presentation was titled ‘Customer Experience Management from the Inside-Out‘ The core theme implies that if we want to genuinely positively impact customer experience and service standards, we must build a culture and understanding that the customer matters with all employees. We should view Customer Experience as a culture, not a tool. I imagine everyone in the room knew this. I also believe that most of the attendees, all specialists in their fields, actively focus on internal culture, employee engagement and the relationship to customer service and experience to some degree. Many of them may even measure this.
Ledaership, Employee Engagement and Customer Experience - How Do They See You?
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However, building a culture that is actively and meaningfully engaging both internal customers (your employees) and external customers is more easily said than done. I do not pretend to have all the answers and I recognise that inputs into Customer Experience Management (CEM) are many and varied. What I will say though is that in my experience there is a gap between intent and behaviour when it comes to leadership, development, employee engagement, empowerment and related beliefs and activities in many organisations. According to a report created by the Genesys group titled the Cost of Poor Customer Service, 73% of consumers end a relationship due to poor service. The report highlights various trends and many areas to focus on, along with details regarding statistics and verbatim comments related to CEM. At face value it should be easy to improve upon aspects such as these.
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Accessing more data or modernising software and systems can assist issues such as those highlighted, however it is only part of the story. I have made the mistake previously on trying to improve CEM through the front-line employees – those who have direct contact with our customers. Whereas it is possible to see success at individual employee level, the messages and learning must be reinforced by leaders and through what they were being measured on. I have learned that a bottom-up approach for providing great customer service only takes you so far.

Source: Great Leaders Double Profits and Customer Satisfaction

Different departments are often siloed and have different leaders with varying skills and agendas along with competing objectives, metrics and motivations. In many organisations, departments do not work together naturally as a team to best serve the customer, yet such teamwork is essential to collaboratively deliver consistent customer experience. The 2011 Customer Experience Impact (CEI) Report explores the relationship between consumers and brands. Based on a survey commissioned by RightNow and conducted by Harris Interactive, the report reveals:

• 86 percent will pay more for a better customer experience.

• 89 percent of consumers began doing business with a competitor following a poor customer experience.

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None of this would be a big surprise to many of you, I am sure. But, they are good reasons for us as business leaders to focus on improving our customer experience.

A genuinely effective customer experience approach requires a top-down strategy based on broad and extensive cultural change.

The CE IQ study found that the most successful companies are those who have senior leadership not only buying into but actively driving a customer centric culture and related set of actions. Intuitively this all makes sense. So, where are the gaps.
Part of the answer can be found through two questions, which when responded to provide insight for any business:
  • What makes a memorable experience that causes consumers to stick with a brand?
  • How do we make our customers feel?
Effective leadership and employee engagement are critical factors in providing a culture where people want to work…and to provide more of what our customers want. Foundation values such as empowerment and employee satisfaction cannot be given to an individual or employee-base, but creating an environment that has a higher propensity towards meeting these needs is possible.
Customers can tell within minutes—even seconds—whether they are dealing with an engaged and committed employee or a dissatisfied employee, which can greatly affect their willingness to engage in business, and ultimately impact a company’s profitability. Studies have shown that, great leaders are able to keep their highest performing employees and have four times the number of highly committed employees, which affects productivity.
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The lesson for any manager is clear: If you want to increase profits and have more satisfied customers, develop your teams, develop your own skills and concentrate on becoming a more effective leader.

IQPC: Customer Experience Conference and Leadership

This week I attended the IQPC Customer Experience Management Conference in Sydney. I was fortunate enough to be invited to be a guest speaker during the Focus Day on Monday and many other speakers have shared their thoughts and presentations over the three days.

Although the conference theme was based around Customer Experience, there have been many great quotes and comments regarding leadership, business and culture that are worth sharing. This blog highlights a few of the key points that I felt were most relevant and resonated with my own values and passions.
Thank you to all the speakers for sharing!

  • How are you choosing to challenge what has been done previously? Don’t accept the reasonable reasons from the past.
  • Our employees want to know their leaders and what they care about.

Gordon Ballantyne, Telstra
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  • Leadership cannot be outsourced to HR.
  • Be disciplined: celebrate short-term but don’t forget your ultimate goal.

Dirk Hofman, Nokia
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  • The empowered customer is now in control of the business relationship.
  • 90% of effort is used collecting and collating data and 10% actually using it – it should be the other way around.

Peter Harris, Vision Critical
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  • Question the initial question to truly understand the business problem.
  • Team composition is most important. A lack of a balanced mix is one of the core reasons projects fail.

Mark Nealy, ThoughtWorks
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  • Most organisations and leaders only spend around 20% of their time adding value to the customer.
  • The fundamental mission of business should not be about profit, but rather value creation.

Dr Shayne Silcox, Melville Council
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  • Businesses have to deliver good service to earn the right to sell to customers.

Andrew Pearce, National Australia Bank

CoachStation: Leadership & Customer Experience

This week I am attending the IQPC Customer Experience Management Conference in Sydney. I was fortunate enough to be invited to be a guest speaker during the Focus Day on Monday and presented on the subject of ‘Building Customer Experience Frameworks From The Inside Out’.
The comments and quotes highlight some of my key themes and concepts that I feel are most important when developing a Customer Experience philosophy and strategy:

  1. Unless your business sees Customer Experience as a culture, not a tool, then your customers will feel the pain of what is not being provided by your customer-facing employees.
  2. Leaders should create a culture of employee engagement, empowerment and buy-in that ensures your customers benefit. When we get our leadership mantra right…our employees care about their roles and our customers ‘feel’ the difference.
  3. The so-called soft-skills that differentiate management from leadership are most commonly the key to driving the change in our employees that we are looking for. Leadership is not a tick-the-box exercise. Effective leadership, relationship-building, coaching, connecting, understanding employee motivations, empowerment are all possible – but they take considerable strategy, effort and application.
  4. Foundation values such as empowerment and employee satisfaction cannot be given to an individual but creating an environment that has a higher likelihood towards meeting these needs is possible.
  5. Assumptions are regularly made regarding leaders capability to enact change and employees willingness to make it stick. It is a mistake to assume that employees can and will automatically apply change just because they are asked to.
  6. Businesses exist primarily to provide a product or service that ultimately maximises profit. We, as leaders and business owners have an obligation to our employees greater than simply using them as tools to increase profit.
  7. Employee engagement, buy-in, effective leadership and an ability to coach can be the difference between a transactional, short-term outcome and real, sustained transformational change.
  8. There is a gap between intent and behaviour when it comes to leadership, development, employee engagement, empowerment and related activities in many organisations.
  9. In my experience too often a business runs a workshop, sends an employee to a training session or takes some other well-intentioned step to rectify a perceived or real gap. In itself, attendance at a session such as this will make little difference in behaviour or output for most people. People generally do not have the ability to interpret all of this information and make meaningful change. An employee may also not be working in a culture that reinforces or drives change as a result of this ‘new knowledge’. Post-training follow up and reinforcement through coaching are key.
  10. A bottom-up approach for providing a great customer experience only takes you so far. A genuinely effective customer experience approach requires a top-down strategy based on broad and extensive cultural change.
  11. Leaders often focus on the tangible process, systems and technology aspects of business. The challenge is to ensure we provide more than a cursory input into our employees and the link between engagement and customer service.

…and the presentation was sealed by elements from Ken Blanchard’s recent blog, worth repeating:
It all starts with the leaders of the organization creating a motivating environment for their people to work in. When that happens, it’s no surprise when the workers go out of their way to serve their customers…and the good word gets around. The organization’s best salespeople are the customers they’re already serving. The end result of all of this good news is that the organization becomes sound financially.
So often we think business is all about making money and that customers are the most important thing. But if you don’t treat your employees well and give them a reason to come to work, they aren’t going to be motivated to give excellent service to your customers, and customers who aren’t treated well have lots of other places they can go.
Think of your organization as a stagecoach. Upper management might be the drivers of the stagecoach, but your people are the horses—the ones who create the forward movement. If the leaders get knocked out of the stagecoach, it keeps moving. But if something happens to the horses, everything comes to a screeching halt. So serve and help each other, and then reach out to your customers with the enthusiasm and desire and fabulous service that will make them raving fans…

Don’t forget that without your people, you’re nothing.