The Catalyst
Customers were unhappy, the wait queue was getting longer and longer. Staff were complaining and staff turnover was at an all time high – who can blame them you would frustrated too if you were constantly listening to unhappy customers all day. Day in, and day out. The business leaders had tried “everything” they were exhausted, frustrated, and overwhelmed with everything they had tried, but failed with. They had some ideas but had lost the confidence to choose because the issues they were facing felt bigger than Ben Her.
The Discovery
When I first met with Toshi and discussed the issues he was facing in his business. I could feel the frustration and concern. He knew the poor Customer Service and high staff turnover was quickly turning into a downward spiral. He had thrown more staff, more training and ore money at the problem but nothing seemed to stick. His management team was adamant they need 20% more staff to bring their 3 centers up to meet performance targets and stem the turnover problem. We performed our usual RoadMap review of the business. As you can imagine I was really really nervous when I discovered they were already overstaffed…..
The Prognosis
Current processes need restructuring, they were not set up to service Customers in an efficient and effective manner, nor were they structured to achieve the business vision and goals.
The business KPI and communications were not functioning effectively. Essentially they were measuring the wrong KPI and did not have an effective way to identify issues and opportunities and learn from the best performing staff.
We knew that simply adding more staff was not going to fix the problem. We needed to address the underlying gaps in the business processes and the management framework to move this business forward.
The Solution
Using our Financial Peak Performance™ framework, we restructured the processes and set up specialist teams for complex situations. We shadowed the best performing staff and identified a bunch of quick help examples and best practice materials to improve the speed and consistency of service.
Once we implemented Ultimate Customer Value KPI™ the business could see exactly what the customer was feeling in Real-Time. We added an Active Management framework that held staff accountable for resolving issues and sharing those solutions throughout the business. Creating a continuous improvement loop.
The Result
I was honoured when Toshi invited me and my team to their internal awards ceremony. We were the 1st ever group to be invited outside their business.
He was so proud of the work we had done together. He said to me “you must come, my people, those who are getting rewarded would never have achieved the level they have without your help.”
Customer service was through the roof tracking at 97% (up from 49%, target 80%). It was so good they won a national award for best customer service (across all industries). Wow what a turnaround!
Now that business could see what the customer was experiencing and the had the management framework in place they could take rapid action. Customers were happy, Staff were happy (in fact staff turnover is the lowest in the industry).
Whats more the business now had 15% additional capacity, remember when they said they needed 20% more I said they were already overstaffed? Yes they had 15% more staff than they needed. I asked Toshi to look at reducing this cost, but he didn’t want o do that instead using this capacity to expand their service offering and offer better service than the competition.
Toshi was was now much more relaxed, he was a different guy compared to when we 1st met. He was working less hours, was delegating more tasks to his team and was confident in the decisions they were making.
He said to me “You did more than improve my business, you gave me my life back”.