Copyright
© 2002-2006 George Reavis
Copyright
© 2002-2006 George Reavis
Identify - recognize
customers as partners and the purpose of a teams existence.The first step is for team leaders and/or members to decide who to get feedback from? To start to think about who benefits from which products and services which the team provides.
This is identification, not for marketing purposes, but for operational purposes in deciding who the team should get feedback from - in many cases potential customers can be considered as well. Keep in mind, existing customers are vital assets to any business and team effort. Many businesses get 80% of their sales from 20% of their customers! Indeed your organizational marketing efforts may have already identified your customers or at least segments of customers - those who belong to a grouping which have similar needs and purchase your products and/or services for similar reasons.
Management support and input is important here for resources, knowledge, and most often simply - experience. As a rule of thumb, I like to identify "the person(s) who are going to keep the team in business for the next year". Here, it is not scientific and often "gut feelings" can play an important role. Use different groups or segments at the same time, keep it simple. Remember, it is more important what the team does with the feedback than the feedback itself.
Getting Started
An important place to start is with customer concerns or "complaints". This is simple and valuable as a customer who voices a problem is valuable both from a retention standpoint as well as an additional perspective of the teams service. Do not change your existing procedures for handling these concerns, rather, use this practice as a follow through to WOW the customer!
Establish feedback from 'criticals', to stay in
business.The second step is to develop the "feedback report". This is important because it is the beginning of the process for team leaders and members to learn to "ask" the right questions of customers to let the team members know "How are we doing?" in meeting customer needs. This requires decisions be made as to what the "criticals" are in providing products and/or services which will determine if the customers' needs are met. And the team will get the results it needs to be successful.
If your team or organization differentiates customers by markets or by services/products provided, this would be the point where you decide what is important for a particular customer group. Also, if your team is involved in a rollout or new offering of product/service, here you would decide what is important in determining "How are we doing?" A reminder, this is strictly operational, so your team would seek support from management and support functions within the organization such as Marketing.
What are "criticals"?
Here it is important for the team to ask, with the help of management's experience and wisdom, questions such as: "What got us here?, What do our customers know us for?, What do our customers expect? What aspects of our service and products give us a competitive edge in our markets? How do we involve everyone on the team in the feedback? What are our core competencies as an organization? What important things do we need to do well to stay in business this next year? What are the basics, operationally, that our customers expect from our industry?
Brainstorm, throw all these answers and ideas down. Look at them from a customers perspective (their perceptions become your reality), as they see your team as well as the competition. This will be a pro-active report or feedback, meaning the customer will look at it before they receive your services/products, so you can use a critical measurement or two if needed. This might be a critical service delivery measurement time or a specific critical action performed.
Cardinal rule is to keep it organized and simple. Keep it too a dozen or less items in most cases. As a rule, it is good to have a mix of measurement, choice, and perception or opinion feedback Try to cover enough different areas to involve everyone on the team! Keep your marketing hat on or solicit the input of the marketing team, the customer is doing your team a favor, as a partner, (that is why we are going to thank them) and public relations is always an important consideration.
Many organizations have some basis for this type of information already. Use it, if agreed, review it and make adjustments, if needed. It may come from existing or former customer feedback events. If they were re-active such as a survey where the customers' recollection of events was used, then look at it from a pro-active approach where a customers perception and experience will be recorded. Much like a snapshot or news article of a reported event.
Remember, nothing is laid in stone, you can make adjustments and make changes in the feedback as you go. The good news is you can start today, but the bad news is you will never finish!
Establish Feedback -
This is the report! Most important thing is to get started. Don't wait for surveys, research, or perfection. Ready, Fire, Aim.......
Customer surveys do help organizations and management, in particular, in long range planning for competitiveness and in the development of operational strategies. Operational strategies can easily be incorporated into the reports so as to make it a 'tool' or vehicle for the team's achievement of these goals broken down into steps for daily operations at the points of the delivery to customers of products and services.
The feedback, or reports should be in writing (paper or electronic) as well as the solicitation/request for participation. All should be handled with Public/Customer Relations upper most in mind and never interfere or directly mix with service/product delivery. For instance, you might give or make available a letter/pamphlet recognizing and inviting a customer to participate in the process during the normal course of thanking them for their business. But, you would not put them on the spot or try to verbally explain the process - as your team was providing them with service or product.
The feedback should always be proactive in that, if the customer accepts your invitation, you provide them with the report (or feedback as to "How are we doing?) before they use your product/service and give you their perspective. This is especially important because, in most cases, you know your business/industry better than your customer. Giving them the information up front gives them the ability to provide your team with a "snapshot" of what you believe is critical to stay competitive.
How you get the feedback and what you do with it is much more important than the feedback itself! Use the feedback as a 'tool' to get everyone involved, focused, and learning! In forming the feedback, call on the experience, wisdom, and research from all groups or departments of the organization, especially management. Keep it simple and make sure it aligns with organizational visions and goals. Involve the team, as much as practical, as a learning experience, in the formation and continued evolvement of the feedback report. Also, make an effort, to have the report include feedback on enough different areas of your customer's experience with your service to get the whole team's interest and involvement. The team should see the feedback as a learning tool, one which is ever changing and evolving to make the team better in meeting customers expectations and needs (frequency also helps here). Not just one time, but on an ongoing basis toward continuing improvement.
Assess
feedback and develop a scorecard.The third step is to take the feedback received by the team from the "feedback report" and create assessments. To develop a track record of the teams performance and members' contributions in meeting the needs of customers. A record that is simple enough to be shared and understood by everyone on the team and has enough meaning to challenge, foster learning, stimulate pride, create communication, and set goals.
Assess Feedback
What gets measured, gets done! Assessment is an informal measurement but principally through opinions. The benefits of assessment for frontline operations is that it gets people involved in a "discussion" and, unlike measurements which tend to be final, assessments create dialogues between individuals and groups. Certainly this is true, but, for the long-term, organizations must track how the assessment is made, the path it travels, and how it is shared and/or what is done with it -- to create focus. For long term results and customer focus, the question must be raised organizationally as to where the measurements direct the focus for daily operations?
For example -- a typical service industry measurement of customer service, initiated by management and then outsourced can actually, long-term, create a whiplash effect of turning focus back toward supervisors and management even for team members who are servicing and have their customers in front of them daily!. How does this occur? Follow the path:
- Management creates the report and out sources the feedback
- The feedback is returned to management/office and distributed to operations/service teams (either in steps or simultaneously).
- Long-term, posturing can occur, as with many other programs/systems coming from the office, and team members become focused "back over their shoulders" to management as opposed to the customers who are in front of them. The posturing becomes to win or beat the program/system and its intended purpose becomes diminished. If this occurs, its potential as a tool for learning and participation for team members is limited.
- Because frequently outsourcing significantly raises the cost, feedback is not frequent enough to become a learning and teaching tool for the team. Indeed, it may even be viewed negatively as an inspection or trying to catch someone doing something wrong, especially if it is inconsistent as well.
- If the program/system is administered from management/office (top-down), as with others, the team members and leaders have more difficulty taking ownership of it. A major reason being, team members only deal with answers and never get an opportunity to learn to ask the questions. Ownership is enhanced if it is administered by the teams, as close to the customer as feasible, and then 'pulled' with the support from management/office (bottom-up).
Most people measure with numbers, but you should also consider using words, which assessments tend to foster! After all, words have meaning! Words were used in the most successful 'best practice' of getting customer feedback which my mentor taught me. Keep it simple so the team can measure feedback themselves and keep a track record. This helps them know where they are and where they they want to be in terms of goals in customer feedback and focus. Also, the more the team does on their own, with support, in the areas of asking, receiving, and measuring customer feedback, the more the team leaders/members learn about markets and customers! And the more team members learn, the more they become interested and the more focused they become!
Develop a "Scorecard"
A scorecard is the only way to have a track record that lets you make sure you are getting better. Being better should be priority for daily operations. You never stay static. You are your own biggest competition and you either get worse or better in your customer's eyes. How do you keep a scorecard without numbers? Try using a "Percentage of Acceptability". Suggested because it forces you to discuss and set bars. Setting bars means establishing the "criticals of the criticals". For example, say out of a dozen or so inputs of feedback on a report you pick the four or five absolutes that have to happen with every customer in order for your team to be successful. Then, in using words, if one of these absolutes doesn't happen a scale is dropped, say from "Excellent" to "Good".
This helps team leaders to set operational priorities during daily operations even if it means sacrifices in other areas. If anything below "Good" is decided to be unacceptable then your team can easily track their current or ongoing percentage of acceptability. This allows for strategy planning, but most important to understand that nothing is laid in stone and the most important learning and results will come from sharing the reports themselves with team members.
Share feedback to involve everyone.The fourth step is deciding with team members how best to bulletin and share the feedback so as to benefit from the customers' perspectives.
More important, to the team, than the feedback itself, is what is done with it! You must share it in a way that involves everyone in, very simply, answering the all important question "How Are We Doing?" And not just once in a while, but on an ongoing basis.
A most effective way to do this is to "bulletin" the report, directly from the leader who "grades" it, to all team members. This could be a physical bulletin board, if everyone is in one place, or an electronic one in today's growing e-commerce marketplace.
Ideally the feedback is shared in a way that fosters interaction/communication among team members and their leaders as to some of the following (inclusive but not in any particular order):
- members have/ask questions to better understand the feedback - learning
- a consistent forum for leaders to show areas of improvement and/or customer perceptions - feedback
- everyone to view their role/responsibilities in maintaining, on a daily basis, the big picture - leadership
- everyone to be reminded daily of the why and who the team is there for - focus
- ongoing customer perceptions of team member efforts providing services and products - measuring
- team member/leader real-time discussions of strategy in daily operations - communications
- team leaders daily operational decisions and priorities in service/product delivery to the customer - results
- increased communication with customers regarding service needs from a partnering perspective - teamwork
- quick, reliable acid test for consequences of all actions during daily operations - priorities
- a forum/framework for team members and leaders regarding ideas and suggestions - empowerment
Also shared in a way that fosters interaction/communication among the team and their customers. Keep in mind the feedback will only be effective, long-term, if it meets all seven of the following criteria:
- Frequent - enough to keep interest. Have a Scoreboard.
- Consistent - establish a pattern and maintain it or change it.
- Real-time - feedback is shared quickly. Create a Bulletin Board (traditional or electronic)
- Valid - has meaning, usually because it is a real customer.
- Shared to involve everyone - bulletin in front of everyone while they are taking care of customers
- Measured - know where you are and decide where you need to be and when
- Proactive - get a 'snapshot' of the areas that are important for team survival
Thank the customer.
invite them to let you know "How are we doing?'Step five in getting the practice started is the focal point of the cycle in keeping it going. With this practice the team creates a process by which after getting feedback they 'thank the customer'. In thanking anyone you recognize them and they let you know you are welcome. This interaction is a basis for developing and continuing relationships. In fact, "Thank You" are two of the most important words in most any language and two of the first words you learn in any language or when visiting any culture.
Must be seen by everyone as an ongoing process -- The good news is you can start today, and the bad news is you will never finish!
Every team has their own training and expectations for thanking customers. Hard skills such as smiles, greetings, recognition, etc. The practice I am presenting here is to pick up where those leave off and provide follow through.
This practice is about stimulating interest using soft skills such as involvement, teamwork, recognition, pride, learning, communications, and business (customer focused) relationships. Skills most often associated with leadership and coaching issues, as opposed to harder skills which are associated more with managing issues.
The Customer Focus 'Best Practice' Cycle - illustrates how this is an evolving process and not a one time event. As team leaders take the members of their team through the cycle, they practice and hone their skills for leading the culture of their team and coaching the team's performance. With this practice, your team and organization learn to take 'customer recognition' past hospitality skills in daily operations to growing and maintaining the 'customer' importance in all areas of daily operation teams as well as organizational support functions.
Let's look at these aspects of the cycle. Leaders, using these six steps, initiate this practice of thanking customers. To keep the practice ongoing, team leaders monitor the four action points:
- Customer Feedback - the reports, answering the question "How are we doing?"
- Involve - by sharing and communicating with all team members.
- Focus - measuring to collectively decide "where we are and where we need to be" as well as "what questions we need to ask to get there?"
- Thanking Customers - on top, because should be viewed as not only the last step but the pivot step in repeating the cycle/process. This is the point where the team recognizes and thanks the customers for their participation and "asks" for more feedback.
The practice helps "lead" the culture of the team and the organization by building, as the cycle repeats, soft skills in the following areas :
- Relationships - as a result of thanking customers, team members learn about customers. Relationships are built with customers and among team members.
- Confidence - as team members get feedback from customers and communicate needs, their confidence to control their destiny increases.
- Actions - when members get customer feedback and share it, everyone becomes more aware of their actions individually and collectively in influencing results. As actions are elevated, commitments are made.
- Results - focusing team members is preliminary to aligning results with customers' needs. Then asking the right questions of customers to facilitate needed change.
Cycle demonstrates how this 'best practice' can assist team leaders to coach team members' performance. This is apart from using managerial skills to enhance performance.
- Intentions - the practice of "thanking customers" gives provider teams the opportunity to demonstrate intentions to customers as a specific aspect of relationship building.
- Assessment - by asking and receiving feedback from customers. team members can make assessments, work on truths, about where they are in meeting customers' needs.
- Commitment - as team members share customer feedback and become involved in the process, they discuss and become committed, work on trust, through their actions.
- Change - as members, with their leaders, become more practiced at recognition they make decisions for results. As the team becomes increasingly focused, they can view change as moving forward and as a transformation.
Management support is most effective and welcomed in each step in the formation of a 'practice' (CFMS - Customer Focus Management Skills) for a team. This is a teaching/learning process for everyone each time it is done; with the mutual understanding that it is ongoing and will not end as long as the team exists. After assisting with all steps in formation, management can best provide continued support and build leadership by helping team members and leaders with the monitoring of the four action points of the cycle for this 'best practice'. These steps are a continuous cycle:
- Customer Feedback (Reports) - decisions on the frequency and consistency with which the reports are needed for the team. Helping the team learn to ask and answer the question "How are we doing?" by providing support on the 'criticals' the report needs to address.
- Involve (Display) - decisions on how, where, and quantity of feedback/reports to be displayed or bulletined to team members. Support for creating feedback of interest to the most team members possible, especially those who provide services to the customer.
- Focus (Decision-making) - decisions, based on the measurement of feedback, as to how it is integrated into and supports existing operations. This fosters soft skill development, such as leadership, for all team members in all operational areas. Management can provide support to team leaders to insure the feedback facilitates coaching and follow through of operational strategies.
- Thanking Customers (Process) - decisions on recognizing customers and "thanking" them for their support (whether they elect to participate or not) and participation (for those providing feedback). This is the focal point at which the cycle culminates and re-launches continually. Here management can support teams in thanking customers for their help and starting the practice over by asking "How are we doing?"
Since the practice of using customer feedback to help provider teams learn about and focus on customers is for the long term, it is important that as this is "pulled up" the organization following an inverted pyramid. Bottom-up from management, at the point primarily responsible to stakeholders, to team members (ser
Align results with business strategies ....... and
repeat steps.This sixth step is the ongoing part. Also the bad news but essential part where the practice never ends! The follow through. Your team has "thanked" the customer in step five and now we 'ask' the same or different customers (even in some cases - prospective customers) to help us with feedback. Here it is important to make sure your team is learning to ask the right questions of the right people so as the effort becomes a catalyst in achieving and maintaining results. Also a catalyst operationally to achieve organizational strategies and vision.
vice providers) at the top, primarily responsible to customers.
The simplest way to execute this step is to, with management/supervisory support, look "in reverse".
- Start with organizational visions/missions. Look at the team's role in reaching those statements through the services/products they provide to customers.
- Identify the needs of customers being met from the services/products. Throw on the table other information discovered in the previous five steps, such as markets, industry challenges, and competitive priorities for both the short and long terms. These are some of the items that the "criticals" from step two are derived from, along with, sometimes more importantly, experience. The result is true wisdom - information filtered with experience - this will be shared/learned collectively among team members over the long term, on-the-job and just-in-time.
- Decide what the priorities are. Even though some ideas about customers, needs, services, products may change, some are uncompromising. These may have to do, or at least tied to, customer expectations and what the team is "known for". Here tradition and past success become a big 'experience' factor.
- Review the teams' feedback reports in light of all this revelation. Does the information depict an event and grab you like a newspaper article about something you have interest in?
- Decide if you can improve the way you are "asking" customers to help you. (Point here: not recommended to consider a "verbal" asking. Keep invitations to participate in writing. Consider situations where an invitation could be a pamphlet or card distributed at the site of delivery of products/services? Possibly even with an optional 'personal touch'? )
- Get input on the way you are sharing the feedback, or bulletining, and the impact or relevance to all team members regardless of function or responsibility.
- Look at accountabilities through the measurement of the feedback. Also the leadership aspect with the sharing of opportunities for involvement through participation among all team members.
- Is the team scorecard relevant to the results they are achieving through traditional management measures? In other words, something is wrong if customer feedback is high but management performance ratings are low. Could be a variety of issues involved.