In March 2012, BP Group have scheduled business process training sessions in Australia.

Certified Process Professional, CPP, sessions 1&2 have been scheduled in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne for March 2012.

At the end of March and again in May, sessions have also been scheduled for New Zealand.

Business Process Training Dates

Check out the training dates and the session nearest you at the BP Group site

Anyone who is involved in managing business processes within their organisation will benefit from this business process training and most likely walk away viewing business process management in a completely new light.

Update (May 2012): link updated to latest schedule on BP Group site – indexed by city

“Uncommon Service – How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business”

By Frances Frei & Anne Morriss
Published 2012
By Harvard Business Review Press

- Create an environment within your organisation where all employees focus on delivering excellent customer service.

In this recently released book, Frei and Morriss identify four key dimensions to achieve excellent customer service. Organisations need to both recognise and manage each of these areas effectively.

Customer Service Dimensions

Four dimensions of business for delivering customer service:
- defining your service offering and how customers will perceive customer service excellence
- defining the mechanism for funding customer service excellence
- defining the employee management system to allow employees to deliver customer service excellence
- defining the customer management system to facilitate the improvement of customer experience

Service models need to be designed around all of these dimensions.

Each dimension is broken down, analysed and backed with relevant, contemporary case studies.
Case studies are drawn from organisations spanning finance, retail, travel, healthcare and freight services.

The authors contend that customer service excellence comes at a price, and that price is the tradeoff between being good at everything or being excellent at your core competency.

Trying to be the best at everything is counterproductive to customer service excellence. Deliberate tradeoffs can lead to delivering excellent customer service in those areas that your customers value most.

The key to this approach is in identifying those service attributes on which you are competing for customers, then determining how to fund service delivery in those areas, define management systems and business processes to facilitate employees in delivering excellence in those areas, and finally, managing the customer experience.

Customer Service – Link to Leadership and Organisational Culture

The strength of this book lies in linking the identified four dimensions with the requirement for a strong organisational culture; a culture that has clarity of purpose, is consistent with the organisational strategy, structure and operations, and is effectively communicated and universally understood within the organisation. This requires leadership to create a culture and environment that reinforces the service model at every touchpoint.

Frei and Morriss conclude by highlighting that “employees are yearning to be of service, customers are eager to do their part, and organisations can, in fact, change overnight”. As with most challenges in life, change commences with a clarity of vision of what is possible, and the unwavering belief in realising that vision.

It is this pragmatic approach in “Uncommon Service” that is refreshing.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is delivering a customer service.

Australian and New Zealand customers can purchase this book through the link on our Recommended Reading page (under Resources).

Please share your comments below!

Read more here: http://uncommonservice.com/

- Customers Deserve Better Customer Service

The latest customer service Australian Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman has been released today. Their survey found:

• more than half of the consumers (55 per cent) surveyed reported contact with their service providers five or more times to try and resolve an issue;
• more than half of the consumers (54 per cent) said they raised the matter with their service provider at least a month before escalating it to the ombudsman;
• most consumers (60 per cent) reported spending three or more hours unsuccessfully trying to solve their complaint;
• one in five (20 per cent) saying they spent more than NINE HOURS resolving their complaint;
• half (50 per cent) reported contact with more than three different departments;
• the most common reasons for complaining to the TIO were because there was no solution offered by the service provider (39 per cent) or a promise to resolve the complaint was not kept (39 per cent).

Why do we keep putting up with this lack of customer service?

Will training for customer service employees really result in improving customer experience?

Or does the focus need to extend beyond training of customer service employees?

Download the full report here

It’s a relatively easy thing for a company to say that it is customer focused. It’s quite another to truly understand your customer’s needs.

When was the last time you spoke directly with any of your customers in an effort to understand them and listen to their concerns?

In what scenarios, and using what methods, do you seek feedback from your customers?

Benefits of seeking customer feedback

It’s easy to get bogged down in the day to day operations of running your business and forget that the only reason you are in business is because of your customers. Your business exists because of the relationship that you have with your customers. The benefits of gaining first hand insights into your customers cannot be understated. The important point to note is that you seek customer insights without any expectation of a transaction on either side. Your purpose is to seek understanding and to grow the business relationship between you. And this is most effective when conducted in a non-threatening manner.

Methods for soliciting customer insights

To be effective, it is often appropriate to use a number of channels to seek customer feedback. For example, written surveys or phone interviews; on premises or via post or email. However, to really build any relationship requires active listening. Listening at a time when your customer is wanting to speak. Often this is in a scenario that is much less formal than a planned interview.

Having a Conversation

There are relatively few questions you need to ask to gain insights about what your customer thinks of you as a supplier. Like anything else, these should only been viewed as conversation starters. Often you can be amazed what customers will tell you, if only you take the time to listen!

The following questions are a good start when seeking B2B customer insights:

• What factors do you consider when choosing your suppliers?
• What differentiates us from competitive suppliers?
• Do you expect to be buying more or less of our products/services in the coming year? Why?
• What defines success for you in your business?
• What more can we do to help your business to be more successful?

More questions for customer insights?

What other questions do you ask to gain insights from your customers?
What methods do you use to capture customer insights?

Earlier this month I posted an article about Employee Engagement Awareness on the Rise, and more recently I noted the release of a new book, Touchpoints – Improving Leadership and Employee Engagement by Douglas R. Conant (2011), CEO of Campbell Soup Company.

Recently I read the book Employees First, Customers Second by Vineet Nayar, published in 2010 which identifies the importance of employee engagement and the “value zone” – those in your organisation who add value to your customers and understand the importance of the customer experience delivery. And I have just finished Shep Hyken’s latest book, The Amazement Revolution, in which he provides a number of practical customer service strategies for building both customer and employee loyalty, backed by dozens of case studies.

Discussions continue to increase around the importance of employee engagement – having engaged employees, who are advocates of the products and services that your business provides.

In the past few months I have also been working with Clienteer Consulting, an independent consulting group, actively helping businesses to become more customer centric by identifying and meeting customer needs through employee engagement and strategic goal alignment.

Employee Engagement Growth

The benefits to be gained by customer centric organisations continue to be widely recognised. The capacity to deliver amazing customer experiences and achieve successful customer outcomes, can only be realised through employees who are truly engaged with the business, its products and services.

Employee Engagement Questions For Your Business

What strategies has your organisation adopted to improve customer experience?

Were they effective?

Did the customer experience strategies include employee engagement?

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There’s often some confusion, even apprehension, within organisations when asked about top management commitment in the context of one of the ISO management system standards.

Who is Top Management?

The implementation of a management system should be a strategic decision by top management. But what exactly is considered to be “Top Management”?

Top Management Definition

Within the ISO 9000 series of standards, “Top Management” is defined as the person or group of people who directs and controls an organisation at the highest level.

Within the Quality Management System standard, ISO 9001, the responsibilities for Top Management include the following requirements:

• to set and communicate policies and objectives throughout the organisation, raising awareness, motivation and involvement
• to ensure a focus on customer requirements throughout the organisation
• to ensure that appropriate processes are implemented to meet customer requirements and organisational objectives
• to ensure that an effective and efficient quality management system is established, implemented and maintained to achieve these quality objectives
• to ensure that adequate resources are provided to meet the organisation’s objectives
• to regularly review the effectiveness of the management system, its policies and objectives
• to decide on actions regarding the quality policy and quality objectives
• to decide on actions for improvement of the quality management system

Whew! That’s a lot of actions, objectives and ‘ensuring’ for Top Management to do! And, yes, the above list is just a superficial summary of the clauses from the ISO 9001 standard. In this post I’m not discussing these specific requirements, their implementation or demonstrated effectiveness. That’s another article.

But if you seriously consider it, who is responsible for any strategic planning within your organisation? They are the “Top Management“.

Often Top Management is the board of directors, and it is they who should consider the above requirements when reviewing and setting the company vision and objectives.

In particular, note the link between meeting customer requirements and organisational objectives. This alignment should be visible throughout the organisation. All operations and business processes should be aligned with the organisational objectives and with meeting customer requirements.

Looking at it from an even more pragmatic point of view, replace every instance of the word “quality” in this article with the word “strategic” …

Now does “Top Management Commitment” become clearer?

Like many commitments, it may be easy to promise, but takes hard work and continued focus to deliver.

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When I first saw a reference to the new book, TouchPoints by Douglas R. Conant (2011), CEO of Campbell Soup Company, I immediately thought of “Moments of Truth” by Jan Carlzon (1987), CEO of Scandinavian Airlines.

Touchpoints and Moments of Truth

I had always thought of touchpoints as being synonymous with moments of truth. Carlzon defined moments of truth as points of contact with customers. It now appears time to refine my understanding to differentiate between customer touchpoints and leadership touchpoints.

Carlzon wrote of leadership strategies in the customer-driven economy; flattening the pyramid and empowering the employees, and for leaders to ensure that the overall vision of the company is achieved.

Campbell writes of leadership strategies in the “interruption age”; improving employee engagement through leadership interactions. He notes that rather than managers perceiving daily interruptions as annoying, they should instead be managed as opportunities for improvement.

Informal interruptions should be seen as the most powerful and long-lasting opportunity for skilled leaders to promote the organisation’s values, purpose and agenda.

Read more about Doug Conant’s book, “TouchPoints – Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments” here – http://conantleadership.com/touchpoints

 
 
- Stephen

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A review of current business articles highlighted a number of tweets, posts, and media articles over recent days and weeks that focus on employee engagement.

This comes on the back of the media hype over the increase in online consumer sales, with Australian retailers being told to lift their game and pass savings onto consumers (eg Business Today article), and to actively compete with online offerings (eg. Business Today article)

Disengagement versus Employee Engagement

The Human Resource Magazine recently noted that an “overwhelming 82 per cent of workers in Australia feel disengaged or disconnected at work” and that this “is costing Australian businesses billions of dollars in lost productivity”. And even LeasePlan Australia, one of the country’s leading vehicle leasing companies, noted in its latest “Roundtable” newsletter that worker disengagement amounts to a “global epidemic” and challenges its workers to become more engaged in service delivery.

These comments appear to be based on the results of a recent Gallup survey. Through its research over recent years, Gallup have developed a series of employee engagement indicators, linked to financial performance, to benchmark and grow employee engagement.

The Employee Engagement Challenge

The challenge is to ensure that employees are engaged with the business goals and strategies to a point where everything that they do positively contributes to successful customer outcomes. To implement employee engagement requires leadership from top management, effective communication and effective deployment of resources.

This article on the Sydney Morning Herald site questions whether managers really know what motivates their employees and suggests that employers need to treat their staff as their number one customer. It also quotes presenter and author, Ian Hutchinson as saying that “employees don’t leave organisations, they leave leaders”.

In the book “Employees First, Customers Second”, Vineet Nayar (2010) (http://www.vineetnayar.com/) narrates the journey he took in turning around HCLT by increasing transparency across the company to engage employees and empower them to be the catalysts for change and to create value for customers, the company and ultimately themselves.

All of this points to a tangible disconnect between staff motivation and company strategy. How can staff deliver consistent, quality service if they are not motivated and have not committed to the company strategy? For effective employee engagement, a key question to ask is whether management teams are failing in defining and communicating the company direction to their staff, or whether the wrong staff have been deployed within the company.

Key Employee Engagement Questions

How does your company rate in the employee engagement stakes?
Is a lack of employee engagement impacting your workplace?
What’s required to improve employee engagement?

Please share here, or leave a comment below -

  

The Customer Experience Coach, David Mottershead, has released a new whitepaper outlining the key stages for implementing a successful customer experience management program. This whitepaper also details how such a program can be used as part of a framework for understanding, measuring and continually improving the interactions that an organisation has with it’s customers.

It’s an easy read and follows a logical process that can be implemented by any organisation, independent of industry.

You can find the paper on The Customer Experience Coach website under Resources.

Alternatively, click on this link to download the whitepaper pdf directly.