ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘management’ CATEGORY

Today’s market does not lend itself to brand loyalty, and with the growing commoditisation of services, field service organisations are increasingly finding they need to focus on customer experience to differentiate themselves from the competition writes Rachael Pullen of Leadent Service Cloud.

This doesn’t have to mean anything exciting or flashy – but it does mean thinking holistically about the customer’s experience.

If we’re honest, we’re all aware that despite a company’s best endeavours, systems will have glitches and humans will make mistakes. It happens. How you deal with it when it does, is what can make or break your brand’s reputation.

Recently, when I decided to re-fit my kitchen, I went all out and bought some new white goods from a well-known brand. The customer service was great, until my order arrived – without my oven. After an infuriating 30 minutes on the phone to the customer service department, through 3 different advisors, I was advised that the oven was out of stock and they wouldn’t be able to re-deliver for another 3 weeks.

 

At this point the brand in question had the opportunity to put things right, to appease my anger in some way and leave me feeling slightly better about the experience and the company. But instead they passed me from pillar to post, and now I am still waiting for them to reply to my complaint email about the incident.

The result? I re-ordered through a competitor.

The competitor did all the same things as the first – email confirmation, text message confirmation, 1-hour delivery window etc. But, when something went wrong - in this case the delivery driver was delayed by traffic - they rang to inform me. Gave me the option to reschedule if it wasn’t convenient.

Simple, but effective. A completely different customer experience.

As for the first brand – they’ve lost me as a customer forever. The second brand not only gained a customer, but I have recommended them to people I know and via social media – creating that marketing gold ‘word of mouth’ that service brands crave.

Whether it’s a consumer example like mine, or a business-to-business situation, the expectation of a seamless experience remains paramount for customers. Very few people or organisations are willing to put up with average service regardless of the product/service features they bought in the first place. So this is where service businesses gain their competitive advantage. But it’s not as simple as just wanting to provide a good service to customers. The processes and tools need to be in place to enable excellent service, in a cost effective way that won’t lead to a net increase in operating costs.

 

For field- and customer service managers, achieving that balance between cost and service is the ultimate goal. But a true focus on customer experience means taking it one step further; it’s not just about putting yourself in their shoes, but about collaborating. It’s thinking not just about the purchasing experience, but about everything that comes after and around that. It’s about recognising the myriad of other factors which can impact on the overall experience. Aspects such as appointment windows, first time fix, communications, and follow-ups are all components, but they need to be viewed holistically, rather than as isolated contact points. Achieve that and the benefits will flow in terms of customer satisfaction and cost.

In the world of service things sometimes go wrong, that’s life – how organisations respond and revive the customer’s experience is what really matters.

 

---

 

Be social and share this feature

Strategies For Growth SM have been powering insight into the field service industry for decades, here Bill Pollock, Principal Consulting Analyst at Pollock on Service looks at the latest emerging trends he expects to see as they begin their latest benchmarking study...

 

---

 

Help shape this important project... Take part in this research project by clicking this link 

 

---

 

We’ve all heard the expressions, “Everything old is new again”, and “Back to the basics”. However, while these expressions may still be somewhat reflective of the global services community, we have finally begun to see an uptick in the degree of market consolidation, as well as the impact of the many mergers, acquisitions and partnerships that seem to be re-defining the competitive landscape on a virtual daily basis.

For example, just a couple or few years ago, there was no real (i.e., dedicated) presence in the global services community by companies such as Microsoft, Oracle, PTC and Salesforce (although many services organisations, mainly among the smaller-sized companies, had already started using Microsoft Dynamics and/or Salesforce to, at least, piggy-back their Field Service Management (FSM) operations onto their existing CRM, ERP or Business Management platforms).

Other vendors, such as IFS, Oracle and SAP had, years earlier, embedded some form of FSM into their general offerings, but not everyone was necessarily buying.

Of course, there was always ClickSoftware and ServiceMax generally breaking out of the pack to gain some robust market share, leaving most of the tried-and-true traditional vendors as proud purveyors of their respective Best-of-Breed FSM solutions (e.g., Astea, Metrix, ServicePower, ViryaNet, Wennsoft and many others).

However, fast forward to today: Where are all of these vendors now? PTC acquired Servigistics (including MCA Solutions), ThingWorx, Axeda Systems and other technology firms; Oracle acquired TOA Technologies; IFS acquired Metrix; and Microsoft acquired FieldOne, all major software players “buying” their way into the FSM market through a series of blockbuster deals.

 

Salesforce, which had historically either been used (and/or mis-used) in its ability to manage field service operations, decided earlier this year to build its own Field Service Lightning module – but, built primarily on ClickSoftware’s Field Service Expert platform. ClickSoftware went private (i.e., after years of speculation that it would, one day, be acquired by SAP) and has lost some of its historical luster in the marketplace (i.e., in terms of “Who are they now – really!).

Another long-time vendor, ViryaNet, was acquired by Verisae (i.e., taking its name), and Wennsoft is now known as Key2Act. In other words, the FSM competitive landscape has probably changed more in the past two years than in the dozen years before, in terms of structure, presence, influence and use. However, we would be burying our collective heads in the sand if we thought that this recent spate of market consolidation is now over – it’s not – and there are likely to be further surprises in the short term, rather than in the longer-term future.

So, … what does the future hold for the global FSM marketplace?

Much will depend on how the market itself (i.e., the current and prospective FSM solution users) believes it should evolve. That’s why Strategies For Growth℠ has launched its 2016 Field Service Management Benchmark Tracking Survey after an approximate two-year hiatus.

The times have changed; the competitive landscape has changed; and user needs and requirements, perceptions, expectations and preferences for FSM solutions have changed.

 

In fact, it may be because of the latter that many of these mergers/acquisitions were “forced” to take place. In many cases (i.e., too many cases) the existing FSM solution providers did not, or could not, evolve as quickly as the market’s needs and, as a result, either lost their traction, their “mojo”, their market preference, or any combination thereof. It is frustrating to not be able to present some of the key preliminary findings from our current (i.e., 2016) FSM Survey – but that could likely influence the responses of some of the individuals who have not yet taken the survey.

So, … here’s our suggestion: First, take the survey by clicking this link, and we guarantee that you will, at the very least, learn something more about the global services community merely by reviewing the questions and answer sets, and thinking about what your top-of-head responses should be.

Second, after taking the survey, be sure to continue to watch our Blogsite, www.PollockOnService.com, for frequent updates and posts on key survey findings; Third, watch for our various published articles in Field Service News and other Field Service-related trade publications), and any other client-sponsored White Papers and Webcasts; and, Fourth, we will be happy to e-mail you a special, not otherwise published, Executive Summary, following the close of the survey later in the late October/early November timeframe.

In any case, we’ve got you covered – with the market data and information that you can use to compare the challenges, drivers, technology adoption and strategic actions taken by your organisation compared against all others. All it takes is about 15 minutes of your time, for timeless information about your field – Field Services.

 

---

 

Take part in this research project by clicking this link 

 

---

 

Be social and share this feature

The profit contribution of services compared to product profits has been the subject of many workshops over the past decade. Still, achieving a true shift in sales focus is a “Groundhog day” experience writes Coen Jeukens, Service Contract Manager, Bosch Security Systems...

At the Copperberg April 2016 UK Field Service Summit service industry experts had their own groundhog day experience when discussing the “Demand generation” topic: what can the service manager do to go beyond the daily break-fix mode towards cross and upselling.

In five consecutive rounds the same discussion was reiterated varying the contributing industry experts. The individual rounds revolved around common convictions like:

Should we dilute customer trust created by service engineers with potential alienation when stepping into a commercial role;

• Service is about helping customers, not selling to customers;
• Service and sales have different counter parts and decision making units;
• What is a meaningful incentive for service people to spot sales revenue and vice versa;
• Service and sales people have different DNA.

When looking at the discussions at an aggregate level, demand generation is possible when taking the following recommendations to heart:

Use service engineer more as a brand ambassador than sales-lite;

• Empower service engineer to become a hero on site;
• Incentivise customer feedback instead of monetizing prospects/ leads;
• Feed customer feedback into marketing function;
• Creation of a “product” development function for services;
• As service manager, do not boast yourself as being a profit centre, but emphasise your contributing role in co-creation with sales.

The service engineer as brand ambassador

Comparing the amount of customer touch points and level of client trust, service engineers do have an edge over sales representatives.

Though it sounds tempting to dual use service engineers as sales-lite, don’t do it.

Engineers gain their stature through technical competence and stamina to prolong the operational performance of a piece of equipment. As such the engineer is the perfect ambassador for brand loyalty.

 

In analogy with politics, the ambassador is an important player in a multi-faceted sales game: the ambassador provides intelligence, sales translates intel into leads and deals, while fencing the ambassador’s neutrality.

When contemplating to add a sales role to service engineers, do balance the risk and reward. Bear in mind that from a decision-making unit (DMU) perspective the service engineers’ counterpart is the end user and not the asset owner/ buyer. At best the end user will decide on OPEX matters.

When it comes to CAPEX the end users’ role diminishes to that of influencer.

Hero on site

Other reasons not to mingle sales and service objectives are the differences in DNA and aspirations. A sales representative strives to become trusted business advisor in order to generate long-term revenues.

A service engineer by default has a long-term relationship, a high level of trust and an advisory role. The service engineer wants to be the hero on site, he wants to be able to help.

• As a hero on site and brand ambassador, the service engineer can use his stature to open doors and generate leads on two levels:
• OPEX leads: consumables and wear & tear components
• CAPEX leads: generate demand for new offerings

Empowerment is the key on both levels:

• OPEX leads: It is easy for a service engineer to convince an end- user to buy small maintenance related components. It makes him a hero if he can supply and install them right away. Any “delay” in conversion of lead into sales not only deteriorates the sales momentum, it also affects the hero status of the engineer.
• CAPEX leads: In his default mode, the service engineer will try to fix the existing equipment compared to suggesting a replacement or new buy. When hinting towards the latter, the service engineer puts his hero status at risk because the conversion of the lead into a sale falls outside his control. Nothing is more deadly for a hero than raising an expectation he can’t deliver.

Incentivise customer feedback

Frequent customer touch points and a high level of trust put your service engineer in a unique position to be the eyes and ears of your organisation. Capitalising on that position requires a multi-tired approach.

In analogy with the concepts of “big data”, capturing the sensory output of the service engineer is step one. The interpretation of that data into a lead is step two. The conversion into a sale is step three.

When the collection of data is driven by an intended use for sales, you may not only miss out on many subtleties of customer feedback, but also bias the observation with short-term gains.

Apart from asking your service engineer to collect specific data that is not in his DNA, you may also risk the neutrality of your ambassador/ hero.Ideally you may incentivise your service engineers to collect customer intelligence and feedback regardless of its conversion into sales.

Feed marketing

Information collected by service engineers is a valuable addition to the data input of your marketing function. Once in your marketing process it augments existing data and will result in better quality leads.

Better leads are more prone to be picked up by sales. Follow up by sales will make the service engineer feel taken seriously.

Not only will this boast his hero on site stature, he will also use his trust with the customer to make him decide positively on the sale. Knowing service engineers have access to high quality and individual customer intelligence, using that information may also inspire you to rethink the workings of marketing.

 

Markets are less homogeneous than a decade ago. New technologies and the growing importance of customer experience will even further individualise customer behaviour.

Services development function

Acknowledging declining profit margins and fierce competition on products, transitioning to a more customer/ services centric earnings model is the logical way to go. The customer intelligence and feedback from your ambassadors and heroes will become vital in understanding his needs.

Where your products development department can tell you everything about your products and their roadmap, any service engineer can tell you how your customers use those products and how customers experience their use.

The combination of product and its use open up new sales opportunities. As use is the dominant factor, the appearance of the offering is customer specific.

Setting up and embedding a services development function in your organisation will enable you to add service revenue streams in an efficient manner.

Your service engineers will be the prime suppliers of input to your service development function. Similarly to proving input to your marketing function, the engineer and customer will feel appreciated when they receive feedback that their information is taken seriously.

Service as contributing centre

In achieving demand generation, adding sales roles and goals to the service department may sound as a logical thing to do.

The profit contribution promise may even tempt you further.

Apart from the considerations in the previous paragraphs, beware that the creation of a secondary sales channel does invoke competition between the sales and service department. A competition that more likely will emphasise differences and prejudice than seeking the common ground.

 

Success lies in positioning your service department as a contributing centre. Let sales be in the lead. Use the traction of the sales department to get organisational and CEO buy in.

Make sales the internal hero by feeding them with high quality service engineer data.

Empower your service engineer and make him the external hero.

As finishing touch, invest in a service marketing and services development function. Sales and service seek the commonality and acknowledge each other’s strength.

 

---

 

Be social and share this feature

Alistair Clifford Jones, CEO Leadent Solutions looks at why failing your own field service operations is also failing your customers...

It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, customers are becoming more demanding and products less differentiated. The boundary between efficient customer service and the best products is blurred. If you talk to people about what car to buy the topic is often more focused on aftercare service than the actual car.

In the case of domestic appliances this is certainly the case; although many manufacturers have outsourced their service business, it is still perceived as the service arm of the manufacturers. I know my wife will never purchase a well-known brand again as the service company was in her view ‘a nightmare’ (her post on Facebook attracted many similar ‘likes’ effectively trashing the product), when the problem was a different organisation.

Facilities management companies invest heavily in bid management, but rarely in efficient operations. Yet this has had fairly tough consequences – we can all remember the G4S fall out after the Olympics more than 4 years ago. I am sure, retrospectively, G4S would have invested more in efficient processes and technology had they known the consequences.

 

Service management is now the shopfront for products, not an afterthought, but it never seems to have the investment it deserves, certainly not compared to areas of the business like product development or marketing.

Why is this? I guess it’s not seen as dynamic or sexy, and operations rarely have a position on the board. Unfortunately, many organisations still view operations as a cost and a target for reduction, rather than investment.

This is where CEOs and CFOs have failed. Not only to understand how influential service management is on their overall business, but also how investment in technology, supporting efficient processes, will really drive down costs and more importantly enhance the customer experience.

There have been many business cases, requiring substantial capital expenditure, which have been rejected, often as the argument has been based purely on operational costs and not the impact of poor service on future sales.

I hate the phrase ‘no brainer’ but in today’s world, we are missing a trick in excluding the company’s reputational damage through poor service from a business case. Also in failing to recognise how cheaply cloud-based products can be implemented as the cost becomes a monthly charge rather than a huge operational expenditure. If our industry leaders truly understood this, implementing a solution would surely become a ‘no brainer’ and the costs of running a service business balanced with the repeat sales.

Our team has spent the last 10 years determining what makes the very best field service organisations succeed.  We know how to get organisations like yours working smarter, delivering better customer experience whilst reducing costs, that’s why today we have launched Leadent Service Cloud to help CEO’s stop failing their customers.

 

---

 

Be social and share this story

Marina Stedman, Director of Global Field Marketing for ClickSoftware offers an overview of one of the key highlights of the recent Field Service Forum held in Amsterdam earlier this summer...

Introduction:

The “Delivering Global Growth with Local Operations” theme of the 3rd annual Copperberg Field Service Forum held in Amsterdam on 8th and 9th June was topical, based on the sometimes conflicting demands of meeting customers’ rising expectations of service delivery while maintaining long-term operational viability.

The event brought field service professionals, operational managers and industry experts together to network, discuss and benchmark experiences and ideas.

Round Table Discussion - How can automation and mobility optimise scheduling, dispatch and communications with mobile field workers while also enhancing the customer experience?

The ClickSoftware hosted round table session discussing the challenges and best practices for optimised scheduling and mobility provided one such opportunity.

Delegates joining this round table debate included a global FMGC manufacturer, a global engineering components manufacturer, a European agricultural dealership, a supplier of integrated food processing solutions and a regional telecommunications provider.

A number of topics were discussed with a summary of the top points below:

The five top challenges faced by field service suppliers today:

1. Managing the field teams – Knowing where technicians are, what skills they have and how to optimise resources
2. Best practices - Keeping up with and adopting them
3. Customisation and Integration - Finding a system that can be customised to meet specific requirements
4. Optimisation - How to optimise the scheduling of resources
5. Customer service – How to keep customers up-to-date on the engineer’s arrival time and the status of their job plus managing overall customer satisfaction

How to best manage Field Teams:

1. Can they be brand ambassadors and sales people? Field engineers are the face of the supplier to the customer so how do you encourage and train engineers to upsell more services when they are on site? One view was that people skills are more important in organisations that deal with consumers.
2. Can location-based tracking be introduced in Europe? There are many regulations on how and what employee data can be tracked and used.  How can the new technologies that track engineers’ whereabouts and enable better customer communication be introduced?
3. Effective job completion: In industries with “Long Cycle” work that can take a week or more, scheduling the right engineers with the right skills and the right parts is more important than knowing where an engineer is.

Best Practices:

Round table attendees were interested in the Field Service Engagement Journey which shows how mapping an organisations’ “degree of optimisation”, “field service sophistication” and “customer lifetime value” illustrates where that organisation is on its journey to field service maturity.

Attendees were initially very optimistic about where they were on this journey but then realised during the conversation that they were mostly at the first “Getting Visibility” or second “Containing Costs” stages and had a long way to go to reach the ultimate stage of “Disruption, Differentiation and Delight”.

Optimisation - Managing costs and Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

Many services businesses are expensive to run because they can only meet SLAs by including redundancy or overlap within their field teams.

It was, however felt that costs could be contained/reduced in many ways (e.g.by optimising routes taken and making the best choices for allocation and scheduling of resources against SLAs).

One attendee said that failed visits (where the engineer calls and the customer is not in) were the main cause of high costs in his business, accounting for 62% of visits. Another delegate said that each no-show cost £60 due to wasted time and the cost of repeat visits.

 

Another attendee pointed out that mobility holds the key to optimised scheduling –the field team can be notified of any changes in real-time e.g. traffic situations, no-shows, cancellations and problem visits.

For many B2B businesses, up-time is their customers’ number one priority.  They need their equipment, vehicles, machines etc. to be fixed as soon as possible or they start to incur costs.  It is vital that field engineers with the right skills and the right parts get there fast.

Everyone wanted to give customers a more exact time slot of when an engineer would arrive but they could only do this if they could use technology such as predictive analytics based on historical data to analyse how long each type of job typically takes and to plan accordingly.

Everyone agreed that one of their biggest challenges was how to get an asset and an engineer with the right skills on site at the same time to fix a breakdown.

Customer service:

Attendees definitely felt that providing more information and more timely information to the customer made a difference to the relationship with them.  Keeping the customer informed meant many fewer no-shows and higher rates of first time service delivery.  While products are becoming a commodity in many industries, service is still an area of differentiation.

Key message from the round table discussion - people see field service as a way to differentiate themselves against their competitors but many are only at the beginning of the journey.

 

---

 

Be social and share this feature

Improving first-call/visit resolution rates can be challenging and frustrating for field service organisations, because there are so many factors and variables that prevent technicians from completing a repair on the first visit writes Astea's Debbie Geiger...

 

---

 

Find out more about this subject in Astea's latest white paper here

 

---

 

The customer may not provide enough information to the call center representative, or that information may not be accurately relayed to the dispatcher or tech; the technician may need assistance with the repair; the parts might not be available, or the tools may not be on-site; the dispatcher may not allot enough time for the repair in the schedule.

There are ways to improve first-call resolution rates, but they require a shift in strategy and an investment in work order, dispatch, and scheduling automation solutions.

We recently held a webinar in conjunction with RTM Consulting. During this webinar we presented some operational and technology strategies for improving first-time fix rates in our webinar “First Call/Visit Resolution: Getting it Fixed the First Time.”

Aberdeen Group found in a survey of service organisations that first-time fix rates were considered a top key performance indicator (KPI) by 38 percent of respondents. That’s because failing to fix an issue on the first visit can be detrimental to customer satisfaction and retention.

 

Yet, according to The Service Council (TSC), average first-time fix rates are just 74 percent; that means more than a quarter of all calls require multiple visits.

Those additional visits come at considerable cost. Aberdeen found that service calls that aren’t resolved in a single visit require an average of 1.5 additional visits to complete. Even for small organisations, that can result in thousands of dollars in additional costs per day. And that doesn’t even include the cost of lost business from those disappointed customers, who are more likely to look elsewhere for their service needs.

The problem, according to Randy Mysliviec, president and CEO of RTM Consulting, is that many service organisations take a “Whac-A-Mole” approach to solving the problem, addressing the causes of first-time fix failures in a disorganised fashion.

 

The key to addressing the problem is to take a more disciplined, holistic approach, and RTM has outlined three critical planning components for addressing first-time fix rates:

Prevention:

Improved training of call centre staff and technicians, increase use of remote diagnostics and Internet of Things (IoT) technology, and improved preventive or predictive maintenance approaches can reduce the number of equipment failures that need fixed in the first place.

Triage:

Carefully outline incident handling, support tiers, parts management, and other processes that affect the likelihood of having the right technician and the right part at the customer site.

Continuous Improvement:

Institute knowledge management, variability analysis, root cause analysis, and process improvement strategies so you measure, track, and log information that will help make your service organization a little smarter after every incident.

Clearly outline what you want your first-call resolution processes to look like, and implement the technology needed to manage and support delivery of those services. Create a gap analysis so you know how you are performing now, and how you’d like to be performing in the future.

To succeed, you must have a collaborative field service management infrastructure in place that provides a seamless flow of information from the call centre to the dispatcher and out to the technician.

 

Through collaboration and improved data visibility, your team can find better solutions for each customer problem, and do so more efficiently and likely at a lower cost.

Remote monitoring of assets helps capture service diagnostic information that can be provided to field technicians in advance. Giving call centre staff more guidance through question trees and full access to customer history data can help resolve more calls over the phone (without costly truck rolls), and provide better information to technicians when they do have to go on-site.

 

---

 

Find out more about this subject in Astea's latest white paper here

 

---

 

Be social and share this feature

Management Consultant and service management specialist Jan Van Veen looks at how you can drive sustainable success in your organisation by unlocking full and continuous value innovation power at your disposal...

As the world is changing at an increasing pace, companies need continuous value innovation at a higher pace on top of the current incremental improvements of their products, services and operations.

However, most companies struggle to innovate their business and fall behind (new) competitors who are successfully adopting change or even driving change in the industry.

Based on many consulting engagements and recent interviews (as part of my research) it appears that three key perspectives - on people’s ability to drive change, managing performance and customer value - do make the difference for success.

A typical example

The following is a typical situation:

A leading manufacturer of heavy capital equipment is trying to grow its services business, as capital investments in their industry have dropped dramatically and are not expected to recover in the near future. The focus is to grow the business from advanced maintenance and operating services and other business solutions, which should become more significant, compared to basic maintenance, repair and spare part services.

The CEO has been presenting the vision and strategy to the shareholders and analysts repeatedly, which was well received at the time. There is a clear burning platform and business case. The vision and strategy is well structured and solid. Clear bottom-line targets are established and assigned. New roles are appointed and adjusted repeatedly.

 

The organisation has been restructured a few times in a row. People are being pushed to the limit to achieve new, stretched bottom-line targets. Different task forces and a programme management office has been established.

However, progress is limited and the business results are not really improving.

Entities are blaming each other for not delivering: market units are frustrated that the business units do not develop the right propositions; market units are being blamed for not selling the new service offerings. Too many people consider their own performance being fairly well, without showing any concern about the bigger picture of declining performance, which is falling behind the competition’s performance.

There are many task-forces on various topics, most of which are not really addressing the real business challenge, but more focusing on improving traditional business as usual.

As a result, this company is being hit harder by the current downturn in their industry then its competitors. Shareholders’ confidence in the new strategy and the leadership is deteriorating.

Now, wouldn’t it be great if.... Instead of...

Wouldn’t it be great if this company would have been able to fully utilise their ability to adapt to change and peoples eagerness to learn, improve and grow?

Just imagine how different the picture could have been:

Many people within the company are aware of early signs of developments in the industry and changing customer needs. They are the first to discuss these changes with their customers and develop new solutions, in close collaboration with their customers.

Step by step, in a continuous endeavour, the business is being progressing towards a shared picture of the future state. All departments (such as manufacturing, R&D, sales, technical services, marketing and solution centres) are collaborating with each other, with vendors, partners and clients and make things happen and are pursuing the same business priorities.

 

For sure, they had some set-backs and they expect more to come -  after all, things often go different than originally expected.

However, nobody considers these set-backs as failures and these are by no means a threat for careers. These set-backs are crucial learning points to adjust strategy and actions and to continue thriving for success. People and departments support each other in doing what is needed to get things done and keep momentum in the innovation.

How to make this happen?

There are three key perspectives, which seem to make the difference for sustainable success. These perspectives define how we manage our businesses and how we engage people to change without creating obstacles or resistance.

Performance: 

Sustainable and increasing success is achieved by continuously pursuing opportunities, adopting to changes, learning and building smarter capabilities for strong performance.

People:

People are considered to be eager to grow, develop and drive change when they believe in the reasons for change and they are not pushed into a defensive fight-or-flight mode. These good reasons are based on a compelling purpose and vision, not on burning platforms, financial business cases or shareholder-value.

Customer Value:

Customer value goes beyond the availability of your great products and technology. There are so many more ways to be valuable and relevant to the success of customers and their value creation process. With this broader view, you will recognise more customer needs and challenges, transcending product requirements and related maintenance services.

Practical example of modern management practices

The following are a few examples of modern management practices - driving sustainable success by mobilising people and maintaining momentum -  which are based on these new perspectives.

Most of them can be easily implemented by just starting to more more of it - gradually - step by step.

 

Live a shared and compelling purpose and vision - every day...

Keeping this picture alive will rally all people in an organisation.

They see and believe in the opportunities to do great things and grow as a company, as a team and as an individual. Everybody has a common picture of the direction in which the company has to develop. This picture is much more compelling than “double digit growth”, “being customers’ 1# choice” or “being industry leader”.

Keep the voice of the customer alive - every day...

A living and up-to-date picture of customers’ challenges, needs and expectations will drive the right decisions, actions, ideas and intrinsic motivation for innovation as well as daily operations.

In practice? Start every meeting with a customer story or insight. In every discussion, review the impact of the topic for customers and search for positive impacts for customers. Let everybody in the company talk with customers about their views on the industry, their challenges, their strategy and their customers.

 

Extend customer insights beyond your business as usual - without blinkers...

Without this insight it is hard to develop and increase your relevance and differentiation for customers and develop your business to outperform the industry now and in the future.

Too often, customer insights and feedback which do not directly impact current products, services, marketing and sales are neglected. Sticking to your “core-business” can be a risky attitude.

Respond to (potential) changes outside - again without blinkers...

Have everybody in the company continuously build awareness about what is changing in the outside world. What is (potentially) changing in technology, politics, regulations, demographics, customer needs, habits, competition, other industries, etcetera.

What impact could these changes have on your work and your business? Which opportunities could arise? Which competencies and capabilities would you need? Which signs could indicate that the change is really happening - now? What can be done now to be prepared to respond rapidly when needed and do this quicker than any other actor in the industry?

Manage high performance through a strategic dialogue - ongoing...

Outcome based, bottom line targets show the direction and priorities for managing and developing the business into a fit organisation with the required capabilities and business model to perform.

Targets are aligned with priorities and strategic objectives. Stretched targets explicitly assume change is required to meet them - so work smarter, not harder or faster. Not meeting targets doesn’t mean somebody will be burned in the next business review meeting.

 

These business review meetings are transparent and constructive discussions about the performance, root causes, alternatives, measures and priorities. Discuss and agree how other teams or entities can contribute to achieve the objectives.

Align expectations and targets of these teams with the (new) priorities of the business and the specific teams and entities to really enable them to help.

 

---

 

Want to know more? Read Van Veen's full original article here 

 

---

 

Be social and share this feature

UK consumers are increasingly standing up to poor performing service providers by purposely withholding payments, according to new research - with 48% saying they had withheld or defaulted on payments in the past as a result of poor customer service or billing issues.

The survey of 1,500 households, by Echo Managed Services, revealed a number of reasons for debt outside of consumers simply not having the financial means to pay. Almost 1 in 3 people hadn’t paid because the bill was incorrect or higher than expected; 14% because the bill was difficult to understand or there was a mix-up with it; and 6% because they’d received poor service. Just 28% of people said that late or non-payment was as a result of not having the means to pay.

The research also revealed that higher income households are less tolerant of poor service, with 1 in 10 of those earning more than £40,000 per annum having withheld payment for this reason in the past, compared to just 1% of those earning less than £10,000.

Understanding the importance of collecting outstanding payments Echo are now urging service providers to improve their billing processes and customer service standards, in order to mitigate some of the reasons behind avoidable debt and to avoid losing valuable customers in a market full of competition and choice.

 

 “There are many reasons why people might not pay a bill and although a lack of income would be the obvious reason, our research clearly indicates that these days debt cannot be attributed solely to financial circumstances. Consumers are now much more aware of their rights and have the freedom to exercise them. They might be less tolerant of poor customer service or inaccurate billing, or think that failing to pay won’t necessarily lead to debt collection procedures, for example,” said Monica Mackintosh, customer services director at Echo Managed Services.

“That’s why it’s so important to understand customers and their reasons for missing payments so that the debt can be mitigated before it becomes an issue, or be resolved as quickly as possible. Making sure bills are clear and accurate, regular pre-bill customer engagement, and early intervention such as payment reminders are essential.  In addition, a range of internal and external data sources can provide a strong indicator of customer behaviour and propensity to pay. But data alone does not provide the answer and should be used to support personable and empathetic customer service to ensure customers receive a positive experience” she added.

The report also revealed that although most customers do feel guilty about missed payments (59%), a surprising 3% think that regular debt is acceptable and 4% think it’s acceptable if they have more pressing needs, such as paying for an annual holiday. Over 1 in 4 think it’s acceptable to get into debt in extreme circumstances, while 6% think it isn’t an issue to be late with payments and that it causes no harm.

 

---

 

Be social and share this story

As the field workforce of many companies begins to go through perhaps the greatest cultural shift in modern history, it is vital that companies begin paying attention to the stars within their midst and help them grow into more senior roles.

Jennifer Lescallett, Affymetrix, explained exactly why and how we can achieve this during a presentation at Field Service Medical earlier this year...

Apparently only 10% of companies spend time developing their top talent. This is despite the fact that talent acquisition and retention is a critical area for most companies. In field service where training engineers to maintain a specific set of devices can be both a long and costly endeavour this is perhaps magnified even further.

So why doesn’t nurturing our top talent take more of a front seat?

“As leaders of Service and Support organizations, we are all hard-wired to fight fires and resolve immediate issues facing our customers. We want our customers to be successful, our teams to have the resources to make it happen, and for our businesses to thrive. Given the many day-to-day issues that arise, it can be difficult to carve out time to strategize and focus on top-talent. It is undeniably, however, our most important job,” explained Jennifer Lescallett, Senior Director, Affymetrix, at Field Service Medical held a little earlier this year.

“Focusing on individuals in our company that are earmarked for those future jobs takes time and it’s time that we need to allocate away from all the distractions of our daily work environment,” she continued.

 

Identifying potential stars given the above it’s crucial that as a first step you can identify those with genuine potential.

“Imagine the bell curve” Lescallett explains “At one side of the curve you have your lower performers, people that haven’t employed all of the best practices. In the middle you have those people who are solid, steady team players who love what they do – fixing issues and working with customers.”

“And then there is the final part of the curve, the top performers; this is where the focus needs to be.”

However, Lescallett advises that we then drill deep into these high performers to find those that can fill future leadership roles.

“These are people on your team that have curiosity and deep engagement. They are the ones that face adversity with determination and grit. And they have a way of looking at a customer problem and knowing intuitively how to resolve it.” Lescallett explains

“People with these high potential qualities also want to be engaged at the strategic level. They have insight into your organisation and a keen ability to connect the dots. Their capacity for learning is vigorous and expansive. They feed off of challenges and high-stakes situations.”

Lescallett herself has adopted a three part process for identifying and developing talent.

The process is identified as:

1. Developing success profiles

2. Assessing and reviewing your talent strategy

3. Executing the plan

“The first two steps are relatively easy. You can lock you and your team away in a day-long, closed door session. Don’t forget to leave your phones and computer at the door and delegate the fire-fighting to someone else. Use this precious time to get your talent plan aligned, develop success profiles and assess your organisation."

"It is the third element, however, that is the trickiest to implement because it means scheduling time to devote to it on a routine basis,” she says.

Let’s take a look through each of the stages.

 

There are three key steps in developing your success profiles Lescallett suggests.

The first of these is defining the behaviours that drive success.

“You want someone who can identify a need and has the enthusiasm and energy to figure out a solution. You want someone that can think out of the box, that’s truly creative, that works well in a team or whatever the key behaviours are that you are seeking in future leaders.”

“You have to then build the competencies around the behaviours that you want.”

“Next you have to define the destination roles in your organisation."

Maybe it is an assignment in a new territory/geography you are expanding into, or maybe it’s leading in a small business unit  within the organisation for example.”

“It is important to help people not only build their expertise in the service and support department but also make sure that they can rotate through different groups within the organisation” she adds

The second process Lescallett suggests is to use different models to assess future ability.

“One approach that has been very successful is using 360-Degree Assessments from Zenger Folkman. The participant obtains feedback from direct reports, managers, and peers on a range of competencies along with written comments about strengths, weaknesses, and fatal flaws. You get in return an anonymous feedback assessment that helps the person identify strengths they can build upon.” The report helps the employee create a career development plan with their manager or mentor.

 

While the 360 report is a tool for the employee, the leadership team can use other tools like a talent grid to assess the organization as a whole. This provides a way of comparing and contrasting the organization and getting a better feel for the talent pool.

Lescallett explains that “there are many ways of evaluating teams, including a matrix format mapping them on a grid, with potential being the x axis and performance being the y axis – this is a particularly useful and commonplace tool for visualising exactly who on your team have both the potential and the work ethic to step into a leadership role, whilst also helping you see who could potentially be in need of more coaching and guidance.”

Another avenue for critical feedback is getting the opinions of more than just the line managers, says Lescallett.

“Certainly they [line managers] have a very good idea of where their team is, but it’s important to get assessment from a range of leaders in the business because people can see different things in different individuals.”

“It’s often easy to spot the ‘racehorses’. Those that come into an organization and are raring to go, always making contributions and searching for more. However, there are diamonds in the rough that are worth unearthing too,” she explains.

“People that might have the technical skills but haven’t fully refined some of the leadership skills you need in the organization. You have nurture them and build on their strengths. It is important not to discount those who may not be 100% polished yet.”

The final process Lescallett suggests is a broad review of the data.

“You should review the group data as a team of managers to make sure that other teams like Marketing and Sales are evaluating their teams in the same way that you are evaluating yours.”

As a manager, mentor or coach, it’s vital to set the expectations that a person’s career is their responsibility – they own it. A person may have all of the qualities of being high potential, but it’s up to them to pave the way for their own success.

One thing is certain though, building a healthy pipeline of future leaders is critical for the success of every business.

 

---

 

Be social and share this feature