Case Study / A global customer service academy that creates a comprehensive cultural shift

Transcription

1 Case Study / Sales staff worldwide equipped with the mindset and behaviours to deliver consistently high standards of customer service A global customer service academy that creates a comprehensive cultural shift

2 The focus of this session was not so much on standards of service, but on behaviours. 01/ The Client The Jotun Group is one of the world s leading manufacturers of paints, coatings and powder coatings. The company has branches in 72 countries and employs 9,600 people. 02/ The Challenge Improving its global customer service experience was a key strategic objective for Jotun. To achieve that goal the organisation wanted to create a set of standards for service excellence that would be implemented consistently throughout the companies within the group. Feedback from customers indicated that they had experienced very different levels of service and response times depending on which departments and countries they were dealing with. This was partly because there were no unified standards for customer service staff to follow and partly because the people working in these roles needed uplift in their skills, behaviours and mindset. From a customer service point of view there were no set standards to follow, says Kirsti Jorgensen, Customer Services Manager at Jotun. It was therefore up to each company and each customer service department to make its own standards and these were not consistent. Another issue was that customer service staff were not thinking creatively or behaving in a proactive way when interacting with their colleagues or their customers. Most of us focused only on our daily work and didn t know how to be creative, says Katerina Haritakis, CSA Manager at Jotun. 03/ The Solution Jotun already had a strong ongoing relationship with rogensi for its management training and decided that the company would be an ideal partner to build a customer service academy to train all of its customer service people worldwide and equip them to achieve a global, unified approach to customer service. The project began with an off-site meeting in London in 2013 where rogensi met with the heads of customer service for each of the regions to talk about the issues and what they wanted the academy to achieve. From this meeting the rogensi consultants helped develop a set of beliefs based on its Vision To Results and Plan on a Page methodologies. These could be used as a global set of standards for everybody working in customer service across every region to follow and to check they were aligned. In order to align the development programme with the target group s current mindset and capabilities, rogensi worked with Jotun to create an online assessment that matched the needs identified to successfully deliver the global set of standards. This would also serve as a benchmarking tool for progress and identifying ongoing development needs internally.

3 It helped to focus on how you as a person perform when dealing with a customer and then how we can work more effectively together as a team. A pilot for the customer service academy was then established which ran in Europe during June and September Before attending the pilot each participant completed the online self-assessment survey to benchmark themselves, and their managers completed a similar survey to provide additional feedback. The results of this feedback were shared with participants when they attended the pilot programme in order to introduce global standards and expectations. Participants attended the first three-day programme in June and then attended a second three-day pilot in September. In between those sessions they completed a number of work-based assignments where they were able to put into practice what they had learned with real customers. One of the three days of the pilot was led by Jotun and focused on establishing internal processes and standards for service. The other two days were led by rogensi. The first of these concentrated on sales, helping people understand the rational and emotional components of the buying process and how they could implement a sales approach to their customer service interactions. The second day focused on mindset, helping people to Play from a 10 so they could perform at their best when under pressure and manage their behaviours to improve the way they came across to customers from a personal perspective. In particular this introduced the Win, Learn, Change model that helped participants develop a more positive and enthusiastic approach to customer service interactions. Participants then had the next two to three months to put what they had learned into practice through the work-based assignments with real customers. Participants were given a practical application exercise or workbased assignment that involved looking how to improve their internal processes as a team and by visiting customers to get more direct feedback on what was working well. They then shared these findings in the second three-day pilot to teach each other and model best practice. Other sessions focused on learning how to work more effectively as individuals and then how to pool these skills in teams to handle complaints and difficult situations with customers. The focus of this session was not so much on standards of service, but on behaviours, says Jorgensen. It helped to focus on how you as a person perform when dealing with a customer and then how we can work more effectively together as a team.

4 rogensi has helped us change our mindset, says Haritakis. We understand that we need to be more creative and proactive in our work rather than just concentrating on daily tasks and we are now performing better. 04/ Achievements Jotun has gained a number of significant benefits as a result of introducing this new sales methodology and implementing this development programme: There has been a significant uplift in mindset within the customer service representatives. They are much more enthusiastic and engaged in their roles. rogensi has helped us change our mindset, says Haritakis. We understand that we need to be more creative and proactive in our work rather than just concentrating on daily tasks and we are now performing better. Customer service had a bad reputation within Jotun - investing in training people who felt undervalued in the organisation and giving them new motivation and a new set of skills has created a cultural transformation within the company. Motivation is very good since attending the academy, says Jorgensen. The participants from the pilot are taking a far more proactive approach to their roles and are helping to drive the business in general. It is very useful for individuals to be more aware of themselves and how they behave in their job roles, says Jorgensen. Learning how mindset can impact our influence and give us control of situations is proving very useful. Customer service representatives are performing better individually. They have also been able to put what they have learned into practice within teams, working together to respond better to conflict in difficult customer situations. The customer service academy programme has fulfilled Jotun s initial objective of ensuring unified standards of service are introduced throughout the company. As these standards of service and processes are put in place, there is evidence of more consistency and a clear shift from local reactivity to global proactivity in handling customer service interactions.

5 The customer service academy programme is already showing positive results and promises to have a direct impact and lasting effect on sales and customer retention. 05/ The Legacy Further programmes will be run in Asia and the Middle East before the end of 2014 and then a global roll-out will begin to deliver the academy to 460 Jotun customer service employees worldwide. Jotun worked well with rogensi to deliver an end to end solution that started with a diagnostic with the leadership team that helped form the strategy and implementation. Using an online diagnostic to assess capability and mindset helped set standardised expectations for the pilot courses globally. The skills and mindset training included business improvement plans integrated through the workplace assignments. These were followed by post-assessment 360 surveys to assess how the participants had improved. The online diagnostics also encourage a healthy dialogue with their managers about their learning and development by keeping the conversation focused on measurable behaviour as well as attitude changes. The customer service academy programme is already showing positive results and promises to have a direct impact and lasting effect on sales and customer retention, explains Jorgensen. Customer service staff feel more valued, have a more proactive mindset and perform more effectively to improve their customers global experience. Hopefully as we now start to work together more effectively we will be consistent and work in the same way globally - it won t just be sets of local standards, but one set of standards we can all aim for, says Jorgensen. We are going to introduce a customer service forum on our intranet to include all the customer service standards so that everyone knows what they are working towards and we have a consistent approach. As the customer service academy develops in the future, there will be more focus on the Plan on a Page methodology within the Jotun-led day to help foster an even more unified approach to customer service throughout the company.

6 06/ The Verdict This project has been extremely successful. It has been very inspirational for us and I m sure that our customer service standards will continue to improve. Our people are very motivated after attending the academy. I enjoyed working with rogensi they are very clever people and I liked the way they presented. They really gave us a good insight into the concepts they wanted us to learn and the mindset and behaviours we needed to be successful. Kirsti Jorgensen, Customer Service Manager, Jotun I think the academy will help us all open our minds and act differently with our colleagues and customers so we will all perform better in our jobs. RogenSi has helped us to see the bigger picture, express ourselves more creatively and put new behaviours into practice. What can we do for you? rogensi.com Katerina Haritakis, CSA Manager, Jotun