Customer Experience Pt 9 - Appraisal

Post series written by Andrew McMillan (Principal Consultant at Charteris specialising in customer experience). Before joining Charteris, Andrew had a 28 year career with John Lewis and spent the last eight years of that career being responsible for the quality of service and selling across the UK department stores.

Nine months on and we have the final part in this series which, in a similar way to the last part on reward and recognition, is all about long term sustainability. I have found opinions amongst several of my clients to be extremely divided when it comes to individual annual appraisal. Those in favour see it as an invaluable management tool while those against feel appraisals can be divisive or simply a waste of time. The latter view is commonly held within those organisations that don’t have a ‘pay for performance’ policy, but even in these organisations I still believe appraisals can play an important part in developing performance. Team appraisals are another approach, but that is where I feel they can be a waste of time as a team approach negates the key benefits. Let me explain why.

Appraisals should be all about making individuals responsible and accountable for their contribution to the organisation’s aims. In that way they should be just as much an opportunity for thanks and reward as they are for constructive criticism and personal development. However, their effectiveness is determined by two key factors: what they report on and the way they are positioned within the organisation. I can only imagine those who are against annual appraisal have been subjected to a poorly executed process in the past either because the appraisal framework was flawed of the manager delivering the appraisal was flawed in their approach. Sadly both occurrences are far too common, but that shouldn’t be a reason to abandon the concept.

Content is Key

Firstly the content should be a combination of measurable performance, sometimes expressed as targets depending on the organisation and, to support the desired culture and customer experience, a set of commonly understood behaviours derived from the statement created earlier in this series. The most important aspect however is that the existence of the appraisal process and the aspects of performance it reports on should be totally transparent to the employee from the day they join. Keeping the form simple, clear and short is also a must otherwise the appraisal process becomes onerous for those delivering it and lacks real meaning for those being appraised. Some organisations use a performance matrix for their appraisals in an attempt to reduce or eliminate subjectivity. While this may be a worthy aim (or a defence mechanism from a Personnel Director who lacks confidence in their line mangers’ ability to be fair and balanced), I have yet to see a matrix that doesn’t de-personalise the reporting to the point that its benefits are lost.

Delivery

That takes me to my second point which is about the delivery. The appraisal should simply be a formal record of the year’s performance. If the leadership in the organisation is competent there should be nothing in the appraisal discussion that comes as a surprise to the appraiser or appraisee. Sadly that’s where the process most commonly breaks down, when the manager hasn’t developed a leadership relationship with their team with the consequence that the appraisal is the first time good or bad performance is discussed, and that’s the best case scenario. What commonly happens is the manager who hasn’t developed a relationship with their team over the year then feels unable to comment on areas for development at the appraisal, so chooses the safe option and writes a report that is neither encouraging nor developmental. What I am really saying here is that the annual appraisal should be a formal record of the year’s leadership relationship and anything less should serve to demonstrate how that relationship should develop on both sides. And it must be a genuine two way discussion. This is not something handed down from on high, but an honest two way conversation about the highs and sometimes the lows of the last year with objectives set for improvement where necessary - and these should NEVER be a surprise.

When handled well, appraisals formally record the conversations that should have been going on every day for the last year. They also serve to strengthen the leadership approach described in the earlier article as a manger who hasn’t adopted that approach will find themselves very exposed at appraisal time. Of course they also provide the opportunity to record unacceptable performance and can document the beginning of a disciplinary and grievance procedure which is so important if you are to comply with employment legislation. However, I would stress again that even this should not come as a surprise to the individual being appraised. For those making a sound contribution appraisals document the opportunity for reward, further development and succession planning for senior roles which is so important, especially in larger organisations.

In Conclusion

So there we have it, seven easy steps to sustaining a great customer experience and an engaged and motivated workforce. I hope you have found these articles useful and for those of you without the time or inclination to read them all, to conclude with, here is your simple executive summary:

Define – what sort of organisation you want to be both for your customers and employees

Communicate – communicate frequently and loudly the aims of the organisation and the culture you want to foster. Evidence the communication with sharing of best practice within the organisation

Recruit – ensure the recruitment process identifies those with the right attitude and personality to support the aims of the organisation

Measure – you can’t measure the behaviours easily, so consider the desired outcomes of the behaviours and measure those

Lead, don’t manage – provide inspirational, highly visible leadership that demonstrates the desired culture and behaviour on a daily basis

Reward and recognise – take every opportunity to highlight the sort of behaviour and subsequent outcomes the organisation aspires to consistently deliver

Appraise – use annual appraisals to identify future leaders, reward those who support the organisation and start the process of removing those who don’t

Customer Experience Pt 8 - Reward and Recognition

Post series written by Andrew McMillan (Principal Consultant at Charteris specialising in customer experience). Before joining Charteris, Andrew had a 28 year career with John Lewis and spent the last eight years of that career being responsible for the quality of service and selling across the UK department stores.

So, now we have a business that knows what it wants to be both for its customers and employees, has communicated those aims to its existing staff and embraced those aims in its recruitment procedures, is frequently measuring its performance against those aims internally and externally and has a leadership structure aligned to delivering improvement – we’re almost there! We’re now on to consistency and sustainability and a key element of that is reward and recognition. It’s an area that is commonly overlooked and possibly seen as unnecessary or frivolous. Nevertheless a clear reward and recognition strategy, frequently used and consistently applied can have a disproportionate positive effect on the culture of an organisation.

Appropriateness

What’s appropriate depends, of course, on the culture of the organisation and what might be seen as childish and possibly condescending in one organisation could be seen as motivating and fun in another. If an organisation has followed all the stages in previous articles, by now they should have a very strong sense of what is appropriate for their business and what will be engaging and motivating for their employees. This doesn’t mean having a complex structure or spending huge amounts of money either, but it does have to have an explicit and direct link to the sort of behaviour the organisation is trying to engender. Many years ago Ken Blanchard wrote ‘The One Minute Manager’ and for those of you who have read this now legendary book you may remember ‘catching people doing something right’ as a prerequisite of leadership. The challenge for many managers today is that they are just too busy to find the time to ‘catch people doings things right’. Well, if you have implemented the leadership changes from the last article you will have found some time to spend in each day with the people you lead, and if you are doing that you have the foundation for a reward and recognition process in place already! In other words, frequent verbal recognition for something done well can have an incredible effect within an organisation that hasn’t been used to it in the past. Often in these organisations managers have usually spoken to their teams when something has gone wrong or at their annual appraisals so recognition for very small routine things done well can come as something of a surprise. However, stick with it through the potential incredulity and the team will start to respond and change their collective culture in ways you would have never imagined possible!
Supplementary approaches might include written notes of thanks for a job well done. This might be for something that warrants a little more than verbal recognition and a handwritten note is often the best medium. In a world of instant communication and e-mail a handwritten note shows you have made a little extra effort and really care. If you want to start spending a little money at this stage you might even include a scratch card with the note for a bit of fun. Initial reactions might be “I was just doing my job”, but that’s just the point. What we are trying to engender here is a culture of excellence, self esteem and pride in a job well done.

Going Further

The next step is to implement a formal reward and recognition scheme which will require a budget. This doesn’t have to be significant and a budget based on headcount – perhaps £10 per head, per annum - can make a really big difference and is a small cost compared to training or marketing budgets which won’t necessarily produce such tangible results. That’s not to say you should mechanically spend £10 on each employee each year, but it does give a scale and set a budget requirement for the scheme. Rewards here should be made through a formal process and that process should allow for peer to peer recognition as well as those awards nominated by managers. Even on such a small budget, this would allow for occasional rewards such as a bottle of champagne, theatre tickets, flowers or even a weekend break.

The Pinnacle

The pinnacle of any recognition and reward scheme should be an annual awards ceremony. This can be a culmination of all the smaller awards given over the year or it could be a collection of categories voted for by the employees. Either way, it is important that the categories reflect the behavioural aims of the organisation such as ‘leader of the year’, ‘most support to their colleagues’, ‘most customer focussed’ etc. In a large organisation this can be funded from the residue of the £10 per head budget as it is unlikely every employee will have justified a smaller award throughout the year. I have seen prizes at these awards vary from weekends away in New York to an engraved glass trophy, but both approaches have an equally beneficial effect on the organisation. If the ceremonies are well executed the benefits go way beyond just the recipients of the awards as other employees will be quick to celebrate the recipient’s success and will have a sense of pride that someone in their team has been a winner.
If you remain doubtful, then just start by trying the first two steps which will involve some effort, but very little cost. Providing it is positioned with care within the culture of the organisation you will be amazed at the power of a simple ‘thank you’.

Customer Experience Pt 7 - Leadership

Post series written by Andrew McMillan (Principal Consultant at Charteris specialising in customer experience). Before joining Charteris, Andrew had a 28 year career with John Lewis and spent the last eight years of that career being responsible for the quality of service and selling across the UK department stores.

So we now have measures against which we can track how our aims for customer experience and internal culture are being delivered. Arguably we could stop at that point and there is a school of thought that stems from some lean practitioners which suggests frequently publishing performance measures is enough to elicit consistent improvement against those measures. Sadly, in my experience, that’s rarely the case and to achieve sustainability and improvement strong, supportive, directional and inspirational leadership is key.

Enough time?

That visible Leadership has to come from every manager in the organisation from the Board to team leaders. Unfortunately, all too often, I see managers managing, but not leading. A simple test for this is to look at a manager’s weekly diary and try to identify what proportion of each day is spent talking to and coaching those that report to them. Often that time simply does not exist as their weeks are filled with back to back meetings or other ‘important’ administrative tasks that take them away from being a role model for the teams they lead and often add little tangible value to their customers i.e. those that report to them.
A fast and simple way of alleviating that issue is to list all the tasks a manager has to do each month in order of importance. Often those at the end of the list aren’t critical to the businesses’ performance and are there ‘because we have always done that’. A conscious decision can then be made, balancing those less important tasks against the benefits of developing an enhanced internal culture and consequently improved customer experience. Being brave enough to change the status quo and stop a few unnecessary routine tasks can create a significant window of opportunity for leadership rather than just management. Sometimes however it isn’t as easy as that (often in regulated environments) and this can lead to a piece of organisational development work to establish what processes can be simplified and/or delegated up or down the line to free managers’ time to lead. Either way, this issue must be addressed as it is crucial to the development, sustainability and consistency of customer experience.

Another leadership challenge

That’s likely to be the hardest part, but there can be another key leadership issue to address. In the same way as we previously looked at recruiting for attitude, some managers may have historically been recruited or promoted for their knowledge or on their ability to complete tasks to a high standard rather than their leadership potential. Once the volume of tasks has been reduced and these individuals are expected to interact with and lead their teams on a daily basis, these managers can find themselves very exposed. A full suite of leadership skills training should be made available to them, particularly focussing on goal setting, coaching, and dealing with conflict. Many may respond well to this support and relish the new challenges, but some will not and, sadly, if they cannot transition from managers to leaders, they must be removed from their positions. That applies to all levels within the organisation including the Board.

Measurement again

That is where the benefit of the individual accountability within the measurements, both internal and external (referred to in the last article) comes in. That detailed measurement creates the opportunity for managers at all levels to identify both outstanding performance against the desired aims for recognition and poor performance for coaching and support, so making the most effective use of the time available to them. In this way, providing the aims of the business have been clearly articulated and the measures have been skilfully aligned to those aims, the managers can start to lead the behaviours that will deliver those aims rather than just reacting to the operational performance results. It is this leadership informed by frequent measurement of outcomes that gives the organisation its consistency and sustainability when embarking on a customer experience development programme.

Customer Experience Pt 6 – Measuring Outcomes

Post series written by Andrew McMillan (Principal Consultant at Charteris specialising in customer experience). Before joining Charteris, Andrew had a 28 year career with John Lewis and spent the last eight years of that career being responsible for the quality of service and selling across the UK department stores.

So, we have identified what business culture is and put that in the context of the overall operational structure. We have looked at how to explicitly shape that culture and engage both existing and new employees with the internal culture and how it is externally reflected to deliver a defined and distinctive customer experience. That should be enough then. Well sadly it usually isn’t. The first challenge given how intangible culture can be is to measure if anything is getting better for the business and its customers, otherwise what’s the point? For some businesses that can actually be the starting point in this process i.e. identifying, through measurement, what you want to improve and then taking action on the factors that are most likely to affect it.

Outcomes

Writing generically, as I’ve said several times before, it’s impossible to be prescriptive on what should be measured. The one common rule however is to try and predominantly measure outcomes rather than the actions that lead to them.

Using measurement as a starting point for the whole programme can be a useful and often essential discipline as it can also help create a business case for embarking on a programme to improve customer experience and the internal culture that supports it. Depending on the business you are in, directly correlating financial business performance to improved customer experience can be a challenge. However, for most businesses, the two most tangible benefits are likely to be:

Customer loyalty, defined as repeat business from an existing customer base and....
Customer advocacy, defined as word of mouth marketing to increase market share

Any business that requires documentation of a customer transaction should find these measures fairly easy to track and consequently it is relatively straightforward to assign financial benefits to improved customer experience. However, many businesses don’t have the ability to track individual customer transactions with the consequence that any actions to improve loyalty and advocacy have to be based more on common sense, gut instinct and often ‘a leap of faith’ rather than hard figures.

Perfect Sense

Of course it makes perfect sense that if you offer a great experience that is better than your closest competitors you will engender loyalty within your existing customer base, grow market share and you will see turnover increase. However, without each customer transaction being documented a hard-nosed Finance Director will always question whether an increase in turnover can really be attributed to an improved internal culture and customer experience or other factors. I believe that is the stumbling block for many organisations trying to find financial support to embark on such a programme and one of the reasons for the commonly held belief that service in the UK is getting worse while efficiency of process, products and services are generally getting better.

Other measures can go some way to mitigate this and the key two are:

Direct customer feedback and......
Mystery shopping

Customer feedback is essential for any business looking to improve their customer experience. This can be collected through comment cards, focus groups, exit surveys, telephone polls and perception surveys from recent customers. However the questions you ask can determine the results you obtain and need to be crafted to reflect a blend of the service that was delivered, the overall experience and the consequent perception of the business (and therefore the likelihood of future business and recommendation). At its simplest a question such as: ‘were you satisfied with your transaction today?’ will be much less revealing than: ‘how did you feel about the way we treated you today?’ The first will identify if the customer was satisfied, whereas the second will tell you how likely the customer is to return and recommend to others, which is so much more important.

Many businesses stop at customer feedback, but it’s not really enough. If you have been truly aspirational in the ambition for your customer experience you need more. Customers will, quite naturally and perhaps subconsciously, base their feedback on comparisons with your competitors. That’s not to suggest their views aren’t important, but the results inevitably will be based on their satisfaction compared with similar experiences and consequently won’t help you achieve a point of differentiation – in other word you’ll stay in the game, but no more. If you really care, that’s not good enough which is where mystery shopping comes in.

Mystery shopping offers you the opportunity to measure performance against goals that existing customers can’t even imagine, or at least it does if you customer experience ambition is high enough. Mystery shoppers should be directed at delivering a combination of objective and subjective feedback, but most importantly, if you have identified an aim for customer experience development that will be a unique point of differentiation for your business, unlike real customers, they can be directed to report on your progress against that aim.

Even More Measures

So that’s what we measure externally, but part of this programme is based on the internal culture so that must be measured too. For the Finance Directors/business case, the hard measures must be:

Staff turnover.....and
Staff absence

It’s obvious that a happier workforce is likely to be more stable and have less absence and any business can put some hard figures around both measures. However, less defined but just as important, is the staff survey which will put some detail behind the high level hard statistics. As with the customer surveys the questions you ask are key to the results and questions such as: ‘do the facilities at work meet your needs?’ and: do you think this business is well run?’ will identify the organisation’s efficiency, questions such as: ‘does your line manager value your contribution?’ and: ‘do you have a best friend at work?’ will tell you much more about the culture you are creating.

Wherever possible, both external and internal measures should link back to an individual’s performance and next time we shall explore the benefits that brings.

Customer Experience Pt 5 - Recruiting for Behaviours Aligned to Organisational Culture

Post series written by Andrew McMillan (Principal Consultant at Charteris specialising in customer experience). Before joining Charteris, Andrew had a 28 year career with John Lewis and spent the last eight years of that career being responsible for the quality of service and selling across the UK department stores.

Last time we looked at ‘drawing a line in the sand’ with existing employees using our definition statement as a foundation. A focus on recruitment is the next, but ideally simultaneous, requirement to establishing a defined customer experience and internal culture. Depending on staff turnover this may even come before communicating with existing employees, but simultaneous actions are the ideal as you don’t want new recruits ‘tarnished’ by any negative behaviours that may exist in the business and likewise you don’t want the existing employees to be working to develop a culture that their newest colleagues don’t seem to support.
Rita Bailey formerly of Southwest Airlines in the US had a simple mantra:

Hire for attitude, fire for attitude

Making it happen

It’s something I have worked to for almost 10 years and a statement that resonates with many clients. So why don’t businesses just do it? The killer question that prevents this mantra becoming operational strategy is: What attitude? Now perhaps you might start to see why the statement that we developed earlier to define the businesses’ aims and behaviours is so much more than just a ‘mission statement’. If well articulated the statement will provide a clear definition of the attitude and therefore type of person the business is looking to attract and recruit. Of course, some roles require specific qualifications or substantial previous experience, but these attributes should only open the door to the selection process – it’s the person you are recruiting, not their qualifications or experience. If those qualifications or experience are in short supply, there may be a trade-off against the ideal attitude profile you are looking for and that can happen with exiting employees too. However, you need to be conscious that every time a compromise is made on the attitude of the individual recruited it serves to dilute the culture and consequent customer experience you are aiming to create.

Generic processes

It’s impossible to prescribe a generic recruitment process as that should be tailored to a combination of the business the organisation is in combined with the sort of people the business wants to recruit. One generic feature though is that it must never be a straightforward one to one interview. Initial screening should be done from the application form and accompanying letter, but there are variations here that can start to identify attitude over experience. One business I know asked applicants to draw their greatest achievement on the back of the application form which proved to be very revealing while being wholly relevant to their business. The next stage may be a brief one to one interview, especially if appearance is important in the role you are recruiting for, alternatively it might be a telephone interview if the role is in a call centre – I’ll never understand why all call centres don’t do this! Ideally, if there is any team working involved in the role, the next stage should be a half day group assessment. It doesn’t matter too much what you ask the candidates to do during the assessment, what you should be looking for is evidence of openness, collaboration and ability to relate to others. A hotel I once spoke with told me that they started their assessment mornings by bringing in a trolley of tea and coffee and then withdrawing from the room. The candidates that jumped up and asked who would like tea or coffee were almost invariably the ones they offered jobs to at the end of the process. That might sound like a trick, but actually it’s a very clever way of identifying which candidates have an inbuilt service ethic from those who are just there for any job. It’s certainly more revealing than a one to one interview might be where a clever candidate can make themselves appear to be exactly what the business is looking for. That deception is easy to achieve in an hour’s interview, but much harder to maintain over a half day activity based assessment. If you have a group of candidates together at one time, it can also be helpful to show them any DVDs etc that you may have produced to illustrate the culture of the business (described in the previous article) or, failing that, having a high performing employee come and talk to the group about what it’s like to work in the business and the expectations on both sides. If there aren’t a sufficient number of candidates for group assessment, an alternative approach could be to invite the candidates in to work alongside their potential future colleagues. Again, it’s very difficult to maintain a facade in that situation moreover, if the business has an established positive culture and is very brave they may even choose to let those future colleagues made the final decision about the candidate – I’ve never known of a bad decision in those circumstances. The final stage (if the role requires one) should be another one to one or panel interview with a number of competency questions based on behaviours along with the more conventional fact finding questions they may want to include. Competency interviewing is one of the most effective ways I have seen of predicting future behaviour based on past evidence and represents another technique to identify any facade a candidate may be using. For example, if a sense of fun at work is central to the desired business’ culture a question might be: ‘Describe an occasion on which you made a group of people laugh, what happened and how did you feel about it?’ That is likely to be so much more revealing than a more standardised approach which could be: ‘Do you enjoy having fun at work?’

An offer of employment

The offer letter is another opportunity to reinforce the culture and service aims of the business. It should be written as a two way contract along the lines of: We are offering you this job with the following salary and package of benefits. In return we will expect you to.... whatever the business aims for internal culture and external service are. In this way there is absolute transparency at the beginning on the relationship and should the worst happen and the new recruit prove to be unsuitable, then you have covered the first base of employment law by being absolutely clear about what is expected- even before they have signed a contract!

Follow up

But all that is still not enough! So many organisations have great recruitment processes but then fail to provide on the job support and follow up. A great mantra for this is:

100% honest, 100% kind

In other words, talk to new recruits at a very early stage about their performance in an honest direct way and be kind in giving them support to adjust if necessary. If nothing else it covers the next base of employment law should they not meet the required standard and therefore are subsequently asked to leave the business. But for me, it’s just as much about a combination of doing the right thing morally and common sense as it is jumping through legal hoops. Yet so many businesses I talk to describe a poor performing individual in terms of behaviour and then go on to say how many years they have been in post. Why? I assume a combination of the business failing to grasp the nettle at an early stage, perhaps combined with a poor or non-existent articulation of what the required standard is. By that point they will have done inestimable damage both to the businesses’ customer experience and internal culture.

Customer Experience Pt 4 - Shaping the Culture and Attitudes of Your Existing Employees

Post series written by Andrew McMillan (Principal Consultant at Charteris specialising in customer experience). Before joining Charteris, Andrew had a 28 year career with John Lewis and spent the last eight years of that career being responsible for the quality of service and selling across the UK department stores.

So, we have a statement that defines what the business aims to be both for its customers and its employees. There are two distinct audiences that will be affected by that statement: those who already work in the organisation and those who have yet to be recruited.

So where do you start? There isn’t a right or wrong answer here, and ideally the actions should be simultaneous to ensure the right attitudes are identified in new recruits and then to ensure those attitudes aren’t tarnished by any disengaged employees. However, for the sake of clarity, in this piece we shall just look at starting to shape the culture and attitudes of the existing employees.

It’s impossible to prescribe a generic solution here, because it all depends on the prevailing attitudes and values in the organisation and, crucially, what has gone before. In simple terms this is all about communication and explanation. However, communication in this sense doesn’t just mean informing people about the latest developments in the organisation, it means engaging the workforce to actually DO something different. Consequently sending an e-mail to every employee introducing the definition statement is unlikely to have the desired effect, nor is having the statement printed as a logo on pens, mugs or credit card aide memoirs, although these can have their uses at a later stage.

Communication vision requires a significant campaign of face to face internal communication that explains why there is a need for change, how the statement was created and what changes in behaviour are required from the employees to deliver the desired customer experience. It is all about shaping the internal culture of the organisation to externally reflect the customer experience the organisation aspires to deliver. A crucial element of this communication is for it to be entertaining, motivational and inspiring rather than just informative, as a key factor in its success is to make the employees want to change, not to try and make them change – a subtle but vital goal if this is going to have any longevity.

Again it is impossible to prescribe a single approach here as that will be determined by the size of the organisation and the existing communication channels. One of the most effective approaches I have experienced is using a presentation delivered personally by the customer experience champion in the organisation to every employee, ideally in groups of 30 or so to allow the opportunity for discussion and debate. This should emphasise what is good about the existing culture, but openly tackle any controversial issues head on too, otherwise they will remain unspoken and consequently unresolved. It should also act as a call to action and talk about how the behaviour of individuals is to change.

The downfall of many customer experience change programmes is that they just describe what the organisation is aiming to achieve. If well executed, they can create an intellectual engagement with the employees, but often they are left thinking “so what do I have to actually do?” with the consequence that they return to their respective roles and nothing changes.

The communication should therefore include an explanation of what the leaders in the organisation will be doing to support the change, how individuals will be measured and made accountable and the individual reward and recognition that will follow success (these will be covered in detail in later articles). It should be a story with context and examples to inspire and engage, not simply inform. A generic format may look something like this:

• Changing expectations within society as a whole – with examples
  
• Consequent impacted changes on the way the organisation operates – with examples
  
• Why customer experience is as important as the product/service and the processes that deliver it
  
• The definition statement of what the organisation wants to achieve in terms of customer experience – how this will have a positive effect for both employees and customers
  
• What this will mean for frontline employees and the leadership support required from managers
  
• How success will be measured
  
• Reward and recognition
  
• Consequences of failure
  
• Other changes they will see – these may include recruitment, appraisals, training, regular communication etc.

Another valuable approach for communication, especially in very large organisations, can be the use of media. A fifteen minute DVD demonstrating the desired internal and external customer experience behaviours can be very powerful if it is well made and doubly so if it stars employees who already demonstrate the desired behaviour and not management describing what they want it to be. Brevity is important too as the media should be short, sharp and engaging – do you remember how you felt the last time you sat through a 45 minute training video? Ideally both mediums should be used, with the presentation introducing the statement and allowing discussion and debate, then being followed at a later stage by the DVD to reinforce what has been said.

If this communication programme is successful it will have drawn a firm line in the sand so that employees and managers know what they have to do, how they will be supported, how they will be measured and the consequences of success and failure. They should be left enthused about the challenges that lie ahead and, if really successful, many will start the change as they leave the room.

Customer Experience Pt 3 - Defining Culture

Post series written by Andrew McMillan (Principal Consultant at Charteris specialising in customer experience). Before joining Charteris, Andrew had a 28 year career with John Lewis and spent the last eight years of that career being responsible for the quality of service and selling across the UK department stores.

So, if you read my last two pieces and are still with me you will understand my views on how customer experience fits into the operating model of any business and how the businesses’ culture is at the heart of defining the customer experience it delivers.

That’s great if the business has been overtly aware of those impacts from day one and has taken conscious action to safeguard and nurture the culture of the business as it has grown. There are some great examples of businesses that have successfully done that. First Direct bank is one and Virgin Atlantic is another. Both are known for delivering a distinct and defined customer experience and they use that point of differentiation to market and drive the growth of their businesses.

Sadly, in my experience, businesses such as these are very much in the minority and “we need to change our culture” is a common plea from organisations I work with. “Change your culture from what to what?” is usually my first question, and it rarely elicits a clear answer. I think that’s because culture is so pervasive within a large organisation that it becomes this huge ‘elephant in the room’ that everyone sees, but nobody likes to acknowledge or talk about. Closer questioning usually returns responses such as “our people don’t work together as a team” or “nobody seems to really care about the success of the business”, or sometimes, more honestly, “our service is poor because they don’t really care about customers”. Unfortunately by the time a business is experiencing these symptoms to the point they have become noticeable the damage has been done.

So what’s gone wrong?

Often as the business has grown the focus has been on developing the product or service and the processes that support it and not the people. New recruits have been engaged to fulfil a function with little regard for the alignment of their attitude and personality with the original business aims. Sometimes it can be that the expectations of customers have moved on and the business hasn’t adapted accordingly.

The most common reaction is to put everyone in the business through a training course on customer service. It seems like a good idea on the face of it, but I rarely see lasting benefit. Sure, if the course is well designed and executed it will provide a stimulus to the business, often for just long enough for the training consultancy to collect their, usually sizeable, cheque and run! The problem is the employees won’t have seen any significant change in the heart of the way the business operates, so a few weeks later it’s ‘business as usual’. I’m not suggesting that training doesn’t have a place, and it is important for most organisations, you just have to be clear on what it can and can’t achieve. It’s essential for teaching how a shop’s till system operates, product knowledge or how a call centre agent must include legally required statements if they operate in the finance sector. It can also set baseline standards for how customers are addressed to or how telephones are answered, but these are processes that contribute to the customer experience, they don’t define or differentiate it.

So, what do you do?

Well, you rewind the clock and try to recall the basic aims and attitudes the business started with – what did you aim to do and how did you aim to do it? This will identify and help articulate the customer experience the owner had subconsciously in their mind when they started the business. Unfortunately for many businesses this isn’t possible as they may have become too large or have been sold on by the time the culture has been identified as an issue, so those original aspirations will have been lost. In these cases it’s down to the current management to redefine the experience they want to deliver for their customers and, importantly in commercial sectors, how that will differentiate them from the competition. If a business is really brave they can ask their employees what they want their customers to experience. I have seen some really powerful definitions created by the employees of businesses whose managers have previously told me they have an issue with culture. Either way, it’s essential that the employees are consulted in this process to validate the output if they are to engage with and support what follows.

The output, however it is achieved, should be a simple statement defining what the business aims to be in terms of customer experience and the behaviours that will define it. One of my favourites is from Ritz Carlton hotels who have a world renowned reputation for great customer experiences: Welcomed, Wanted, Remembered, Cared For. Essentially, this statement is memorable and is applied both to how they treat their customers and how they treat their employees. Another one, which gives me a great sense of personal satisfaction, was created by the employees of a local government team I have recently worked with: People, Passion, Pride. The power of these statements is their simplicity, which makes them memorable, and their relevancy to the businesses’ product or service.

You also need to be careful how these statements are positioned with the employees if they are to be effective. To call them ‘vision statements’ isn’t very relevant to a front line employee and so many that I see are meaningless such as ‘to deliver world class service’ or ‘to exceed our customers’ expectations’. What do these mean in terms of behaviour to an employee on a till or in a call centre? Aspirations that are delivered as ‘vision’ or ‘mission’ statements and use meaningless management speak can only damage a businesses’ culture further by providing a breeding ground for cynicism.

So, hopefully we have done the seemingly impossible and identified and articulated the businesses’ culture in a simple statement and engaged the employees in the process. Next time we shall look at how that statement becomes a foundation for improving the customer experience.

Managing Knowledge Through Culture and Technology

Following on from my previous point that surfacing and sharing knowledge could be a crucial factor in survival right now, the underlying enabler in leveraging this knowledge is culture. If your organisation doesn't already have a knowledge sharing and evolution culture, then all the information you store is only of limited use.

The typical view amongst many culture change consultants is that culture is about people and therefore all change strategies must focus entirely on human structures. A business issue. Behaviours, communications and processes; not technology. The vertical split in function and skills dividing business and technology in most commercial and consulting environments, compounds this division and embeds it into our ways of thinking.

The reason I make this point is that we live in a time where technology and human behaviour are so closely inter-twined, even for those who consider themselves technophobes, that ignoring one or the other just increases the difficulties in changing culture.

Technology by its nature is an enabler, facilitating our ability to do virtually everything, all the way from computing and working to socialising and entertainment. A great example of technology driving culture is the way social utilities like Facebook have single-handedly raised the web literacy of a whole generation.

If leveraged sensibly then, technology can greatly facilitate and speed up culture change around knowledge management by providing a directional platform that removes the barriers to sharing and evolving knowledge, driving new behaviours and ways of thinking that over time become embedded into organisational norms i.e. culture.

The key here is to think of change as a journey, rather than a big bang - if you want it to be painless anyway! People need time to learn and adapt so my suggestion is to approach the development of knowledge sharing in terms of maturity, where technology supported by a change programme evolves the immature information capture state towards more complex social interaction around knowledge and innovation at the end of the journey.

The following is a Knowledge Management Maturity Model I've sketched out to illustrate what I mean:

Customer Experience Pt 2 - Identifying and Managing Culture

Post series written by Andrew McMillan (Principal Consultant at Charteris specialising in customer experience). Before joining Charteris, Andrew had a 28 year career with John Lewis and spent the last eight years of that career being responsible for the quality of service and selling across the UK department stores.


Last time I attempted to put into some context the importance of business culture in the overall operating model and consequent customer experience. In this piece I hope to give some thoughts as to how it can be identified and managed to positive effect.

So what is culture?

In the simplest of terms it’s ‘the way we do things around here’. There have been many academic studies on the subject but, in my view, intellectualising the subject is unlikely to help a business shape its culture from an operational perspective. What most of the studies agree on is that a culture is created from an amalgam of the businesses’ activities both past and current which will include: stories of previous events, organisational structure, how power is disseminated or not within the organisation, symbols such as management parking spaces, dining rooms etc, leadership style and many more depending which study you happen to read.

In essence though, it does amount to ‘the way we do things around here’ but how do you shape that in practical terms and what is a good or not so good culture?

Shaping Culture

Well, that all depends on what you are trying to achieve in the organisation which is where it gets so complicated. However, considering what sort of culture you want to create in the organisation is an essential starting point and one many organisations ignore. Perhaps it would help to give a couple of, admittedly extreme, examples to illustrate the point: I don’t want a junior surgeon to be creative or empowered if they are operating on me, nor do I want a troop of soldiers to feel empowered to question orders in a battle situation. BUT, and this is the challenging bit, I do want a senior medical practitioner to be imaginative and creative as that is how advances in learning are made and likewise I would want our senior military figures to be creative in their strategy and tactics as that is often how battles are won. So the culture you create very much depends on what you have to achieve in the organisation and, in the examples I have given, this may even change for different parts of the organisation.

Fortunately many organisations aren’t responsible for the nation’s defence or advances in medical science so it can be a little more straightforward!

An Illustration

Let’s go back to the small business I talked about in the last piece. The owner is initially the only employee and is likely to have a clear idea of how the business is to interact with its customers and have a passion for the success of the business. This may be as simple as being efficient and polite, but it may include thinking creatively to offer a very personalised service, or wanting to be known for being informal and especially welcoming or some other point of differentiation the owner has identified. The culture won’t be explicitly articulated because it doesn’t need to be – it’s in the owner’s head!

As the business finds the culture is successful and appealing to its customers it will grow and the owner will recruit more people. The people recruited are likely to share the owner’s own views and attitudes just in the same way as we subconsciously choose friends with whom we have common views and attitudes. The new recruits are also likely to have an affinity for the business and a passion for it to succeed or they wouldn’t have been recruited in the first place. So, we now have a business of 10 employees all of whom know the owner and work closely with them on a day to day basis, being kept abreast of new developments and thinking as the business grows. If the recruitment has been done with care, these ten people will share some common views, attitudes and approaches to the organisation that will bind them together as a cohesive unit with a real sense of common purpose and a desire for the business to succeed. Nothing will have explicitly been done to shape the culture, but implicitly the workforce will have come together as a group of like-minded individuals.

So far, so good but what happens when the business gets really successful and grows to 100 employees?

Managing Culture

At 100 employees, the latest recruit often won’t have a close relationship with the owner and is less likely to have been personally recruited by them. They may well be working to pay a mortgage, support a family, buy a new car or whatever else, but it is unlikely they will automatically share the passion the owner has for the business. And that’s with just 100 people! When you get to 1000, 10,000 or 100,000 the recruitment and its leadership can be so far removed from the original aims of the business that the people making the recruitment decisions may not be clear about the owner’s original overall aims, let alone the views and attitudes the people they are recruiting should have to achieve them.

So, at what point does the culture move from something implicit to require explicit shaping and leadership? I don’t believe there is a definitive answer for that question, but it is likely to be the stage at which the business has got to a size at which the latest recruit does not have day to day contact with the owner. At that point the owner needs to stop, think carefully and clearly about the views and attitudes that have made the business successful to date and how to ensure they are replicated with every new employee and frequently reinforced for the existing employees. Sounds simple and perhaps obvious, but it rarely seems to actually happen which can be very damaging as it’s so much harder to change a large organisation’s culture when it has become firmly established than it is to shape it as the organisation builds.

So, I hope I have provoked some thoughts about the culture of a business and how it can be identified and shaped to be a great attribute or, as is often the case, how it can be very damaging to the future well-being and growth of an organisation. Next time we will look at how you define or actively start to change an existing organisation’s culture.

Customer Experience Pt 1 - Introduction

Post series written by Andrew McMillan (Principal Consultant at Charteris specialising in customer experience). Before joining Charteris Andrew had a 28 year career with John Lewis and spent the last eight years of that career being responsible for the quality of service and selling across the UK department stores.

This series of blogs is about what it takes for any organisation to deliver a consistent and distinctly identifiable quality of service through its employees. I would welcome, and will respond to, any comments or thoughts of your own that you may wish to add as we go.

Delivering Customer Satisfaction

I want to start by putting the customer experience factor (or whatever you might choose to call it) into some context with other business activity.

In simplistic terms the customer experience and consequential satisfaction or otherwise of a customer delivered by any organisation can be divided into 3 key areas:

1. The competiveness/desirability/relevance of the product or services the organisation is providing.
   
2. The effectiveness of the systems or processes to deliver that product or service to a customer, in other words – how easy are you to do business with?
   
3. The way the staff in the organisation interact with its customers, ideally leaving them feeling they have been treated as an individual rather than being part of a process and, when appropriate, genuinely cared for.
   

If you were starting your own business tomorrow it would probably be because you felt you had an idea for a product, proposition or service that nobody else, or nobody else in your area, offered. Possibly this might be offering better quality or price than any existing potential competitors too. Consequently that has to be the starting point for all organisations as it must be the reason for their very existence. If the product or services you are offering don’t represent an attractive proposition for your target customers the organisation is destined for failure.

What’s next?

Well there is no point in having a great product or service if your customers find it easier to do business with your competitors. The systems and processes are very important as in a time pressed world nobody appreciates confusion, complication or errors. The knowledge and advice you are able to impart about your product or service are also very important as you will be perceived as an expert in what you do and customers will want to trust your advice.

Finally, you are really going to look after your customers and care about them individually as you will want the business to grow. Consequently you will want your customers to come back and bring their friends because they have enjoyed dealing with you.

So, all pretty obvious stuff, and even more obvious if you are still thinking of a small business where the owner is the person the customers interact with. Of course you are going to be easy to do business with and you are going to care about your customers and leave them feeling good about the transaction because you have a vested interest in making the business succeed.

What happens when the organisation grows to 100 employees? Well, the product or service will remain the same or perhaps diversify a little and the owner is still likely to be driving the development. The systems and processes may have become more complex as the organisation has grown but, to a large extent, the logistical challenges of the growth will have ensured the processes have developed in tandem.

So what about the people and customer experience they deliver?

Intentionally or accidentally, the organisation will have developed its own culture and that will have a significant effect on how its customers are treated as the owner will no longer be dealing with each customer personally. That will affect how those customers perceive the business when they interact with it. However, because the culture of a business is less tangible than its products, services or processes it is often the case that there is less overt awareness of how the evolving internal culture can affect customer service. This can often be to the detriment of the business as a whole, which is why I believe we have such a reputation for poor service in the UK.

So, I hope I have put business culture into some degree of context within the overall operating model. Next time we shall look at culture and how you can positively shape it in a large organisation.

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Contact - andrew.mcmillan@charteris.com