A different way of thinking for the management team in respect of Customer Satisfaction

To move a team of managers from a well established way of doing things and changing their thinking to adopt a new process & system

A different way of thinking for the management team in respect of Customer Satisfaction

Posted by Charlotte Green on

The challenge

Having designed and developed a customer feedback process and system, the challenge was to ensure ROI opportunities were utilised to the full, by quickly changing the old way of reacting to feedback to getting the most out of a new, live dashboard and detailed analysis. The businesses required training for the management team, in using the system.

However, the higher priority was to start with changing the mindset of the management team to understand why they needed to adapt and adopt the way they viewed and used customer feedback to improve employee performance. The challenge was changing an inherent and rigid mindset of ‘this is how we’ve always done it so why change now? to accepting a new way of working that moved towards a personal development and customer centric approach.

Working with the management team, we identified the differences between the new and old processes. The main challenge was behavioural, and moving from a punitive, ‘tell and do’ approach based on negative individual feedback, to a more trend based overview style of reporting customer feedback, where the whole team performance and its impact on the customer could be easily viewed and assessed for general training requirements.

The effect

All managers using the new customer feedback system were tasked with changing the way they used the information it provided, but simply telling them to change wouldn’t work – they needed to be guided through understanding their own opinions, objections and barriers, and understand ‘WHY’ the change would improve business and satisfaction results.

Further work with the managers enabled them to consider the reaction of the teams they led when the introduction of a new process happened and then how to overcome a range of objections, and how to lead their teams forward through understanding the change curve and how people typically respond.

Change in thinking doesn’t happen overnight. The practical ‘How to Use the System’ training was then a quick, immediately accepted and understood, knowledge transfer, and by setting up super users across each region which was strongly supported by the centre, an internal support team were immediately in place from day one of ‘Go Live’

Solution

Some companies operate an ‘across the board, sheep-dipping’ approach, and don’t spend time describing the CONTEXT of training, or providing opportunity for people to ask the most important question – ‘WHY’? This is usually followed by scratching of heads by the exec team, wondering why the required change hasn’t gained any traction?

We delivered and facilitated sessions over 5 x half days to reflect and pre-suppose a new environment and how their new style of thinking would improve results and drive new and improved behaviour – and by the end of the process the management team had developed their own vision of how they could change the way they used customer satisfaction feedback for positive intention and outcome.

Result

The leadership team were able to embraced and facilitate discussions that were informal, structured, large or small with their teams - and maximise the output of customer service results and how to increase morale in the team. Over 30 managers said that the old thinking and use of feedback for punitive measures, something they had been used to for several years, to quickly adopting a new process, AND whole new ethos and reason for feedback was refreshing and relevant.

The leadership team felt enabled to cascade this new change, throughout their teams consistently, authentically and empathetically; knowing the different personalities of people in their teams supported the adoption The change in behaviour of the management team took only a matter of months to embed and continues to go from strength to strength now. Interestingly, an organic change happened too, with the management being the strongest advocates for using customer feedback positively, so new people to the business are introduced to this culture without having to be trained – therefore creating a self-sustaining approach.

A natural and trusted communication channel widened, reducing defensiveness and fostered a growth mindset that further supported promotions, succession planning and a forward-thinking cultured team.

Charlotte Green
Charlotte Green

Facilitating business growth through customer and employee insight, training and coaching for leaders that want to be directed by customers and informed by their teams