The approach provided more clarity, visibility and focus; helping the team identify that programmes were on track, choose the most important things to do and make decisions at the right time.
Priorities
Our client was the Customer Services Director of a national wireless carrier. The customer services operation comprised over 4000 people located in a Head Office and across Contact Centres including additional Outsourcing Centres. Customer Services (CS) had consistently lifted its performance over the previous few years to exceed quality and cost objectives during a period of rapid business growth.
The situation changed rapidly during our tenure including significant manpower reductions and a major re-organisation that TRIMENTIS assisted with, plus the national organisation became part of an International provider over the course of our work.
The rate of new product introduction and the associated complexity of operations was increasing dramatically and the business needed to deliver a more differentiated service to its customers, enabling it to maximise revenues and minimise costs.
Challenges facing the business required new, smarter ways of collaborative working and the operating environment was rapidly becoming too complex to rely on individual and team heroics. The CS Director set a good leadership example in motivating people, but the management environment had insufficient emphasis on systematic approaches nor on cross-team involvement outside of the operations group. There was also insufficient linkage between the overall Division’s goals and team activities with inadequate data to plan and review activities effectively.
The Director recognised these shortcomings and set priorities to establish a more systematic and evidence based management and leadership environment to help better lead and direct the rapidly evolving business.
TRIMENTIS were invited to lead the implementation of an enterprise wide performance management system for the Director and Senior Management Team (SMT) to use in leading and managing the customer services operation.
Approach
TRIMENTIS lead the implementation of our Performance Leadership System, focused on the core Strategy Formulation Process and the Performance Management Process.
The strategic plan for the business was clarified and key goals and objectives systematically developed. Senior managers developed a range of underpinning programmes to deliver against the goals and objectives, and these were supported with project plans detailing people, budget and other resources required.
A set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) was developed for the strategic goals and objectives and from supporting operational plans. Further analysis was completed on the underlying capabilities of the organisation in terms of core operational process designs, manpower plans including skills and competency profiles, IT, knowledge and other core capabilities.
The team responsible for data analysis and reporting was strengthened and training provided to increase their capabilities in terms of data acquisition and analysis, and use of automated systems to support data capture and analysis. Customer information was organised to help develop customer insights from the many sources of data including surveys, feedback, mystery shopping and the experiences of customer facing staff.
The Senior Management Team held monthly Performance Review Meetings (PRMs) at which updated summaries of all the key data were permanently displayed on the walls of the meeting room. Following the standard agenda for PRMs, the meeting systematically reviewed each set of data starting with KPIs including key customer data, and key programme, project and operational milestone reports.
The team moved through the PRM agenda addressing strategic issues, capabilities such as process improvements and risk analysis. The meetings concluded with clarification of priority issues and actions to address together with the development of a communication plan to enable all SMT members to brief their people.
Over time as the teams became more proficient with the systems and increased their focus on key issues, many innovations were developed including a move to provide information at the PRMs using a virtual ICT based system projecting data in meeting rooms, and the development of Personal Scorecards for individual contact centre agents.
Results
A top-down systematic approach was implemented which demonstrated that Customer Service programmes continued to support the Company and Divisional strategy and financial objectives and provided an overview of the Division’s performance.
The approach provided more clarity, visibility and focus; helping the team identify that programmes were on track, choose the most important things to do and make decisions based on these insights at the right time.
Effective integration of the process across the Division was achieved, clarifying roles, providing structure to planning and review meetings and enabling people to deliver their accountabilities
More productive negotiations for the scarce resources in terms of budgets, people and technical developments were enabled, creating an interdependent approach and relieving much of the internal competition that had grown up previously.
The team experienced faster decision making with more relevant and reliable data made available to users, driving an increased speed of execution through shortened lines of command.
Relationships with other parts of the business became closer and more aligned, with the process of building a CS Strategy requiring input from other Directorates seen as a first in terms of the pro-active involvement of a wider group of stakeholders.
Testimonial
We have worked together for nearly three years on a variety of assignments ranging from interim management, process management, team development through to work on the overall strategy and operational planning process. I am delighted to recommend them to you.
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Client Success Stories
Learn how we have worked with clients to achieve significant results through our client success stories. Each client success story illustrates how we have helped define client priorities, what approach the team took and the results the client achieved … turning priorities into results.
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To start using performance leadership across your organisation today get in touch with us through our Contact page. TRIMENTIS has been working with clients for nearly two decades across a range of sectors and we have supported over £9 billion worth of major infrastructure projects.