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Collaboration – Curse or Strength?

Collaboration is defined as the action of working with someone (others) to produce or create a product, process, procedure or outcome. The word is derived from the mid 19th century Latin collaborate, meaning “work together”.

Recent studies indicate “collaborative cultures” are actually less effective largely due the bottleneck effect occurring from the reality that the knowledge, skill, ability to effectively execute comes from 20% of the population, the so called “stars”. These are the “go to” that always gets it done. In a recent Harvard Business Review (HBR) article it was noted;

Up to a third of value-added collaborations come from only 3% to 5% of employees.  

Why is this? Is it possible that the way we measure collaboration, working together, is all wrong? As Dr. Jim Sniechowski once wrote;

Collaborations are unique and resist the heavy-handedness and constraints inherent in numerical analysis. Collaborations are fluid and subtle and those that work the best last until the task is done and then dissolve. ~Dr. Jim Sniechowski  

By definition collaboration – how effectively we work together, cannot be measured with scientific measures. It’s simply not quantifiable, and therefore open to impression and assumption. Said another way, we measure effective collaboration not by execution, but by our opinions and feelings.

Consider this, isn’t collaboration truly the culmination of a group of individuals bringing their experience, expertise and talent together with the purpose of accomplishing a common goal or objective? Effective value-add collaboration occurs when the culture welcomes and encourages diversity in thought, style, communication, and life experiences.

The ultimate measure of effective collaboration has to be the outcome of the objective. Individuals have to be measured on the effectiveness of their individual contributions. I’m sure we’ve all been on a team where a few members did the majority of the work, yet everyone shared in the reward!

Effective Cultures define collaboration in a way that also includes inclusion of all styles, separates the performance outcome from the method, celebrates diversity, transparency, and yes, execution.

Continue the discussion by asking yourself:

  1. Is collaboration a strength or today’s Dog Whistle for “Team Player”?
  2. Are organizations properly defining and measure collaboration; also are they properly recognizing and rewarding their star players that always deliver, but depending on how collaboration is defined in the culture, may go unrecognized, and in fact may actually be pushed out of the organization?
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Wells Fargo – The Return of Enron?

Think your organization is Enron proof?  Think again, or ask the CEO of Wells Fargo. Recently is came to light that some 5,300 employees of the financial giant engaged in massive fraudulent activities involving the falsification of documents, mishandling of customer accounts, and what essentially amounts to id theft. The use of another’s personal information to open accounts without their knowledge.

Now after Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, and oh yeah the great recession of 08, you would think certainly executive leaders paid the ultimate price right? Wrong! In fact, the top executive responsible for the division at the center of the storm was allowed to retire taking home more than $120 Million dollars. Certainly, someone was held accountable right, yep, the 5,300 low-level employees and supervisors directly involved in the fraud. It’s been reported that one of the fired employees actually called the compliance hotline to report the fraud before being fired. This is why ethics hotlines alone do not work.

In most organizations the executive leadership establishes the strategy for the organization, for example, achieve 12% y/y growth in new accounts. The objective is communicated to mid-level leaders in the form of corporate strategy statements, and goal objectives. In turn, the specific targets are developed by the team down to the individual level. For example, a front line member may receive a goal of 35 new accounts per month. Achieving this goal could result in either monthly, quarterly or annual bonus. Obviously the more the goal is exceeded the higher the payout. This is a very common operating practice, and let me say properly managed, pay for performance is highly effective.While I have no knowledge of the specifics surrounding the compensation programs at Wells, the basics would most likely be something like this:

pyramid

 

Culture Clash

In high performing customer and employee-centric cultures, there are organic protections against the creation of an Enron-like environment. Employees are invested and engaged in the mission of the organization, the customers best interest is at the heart of every decision. Measures are in place to ensure the proper checks and balances actively protecting the customer’s experience at every leg of the journey.

When the customer and the organization’s relationship with the customer are central to the core of operations, the customer is protected. Employees from the C-suite to the frontline understand and embrace their individual responsibility to protect the relationship with the customer, and that unethical acts are not tolerated at any level. This is more than an annual training event, stern language in the employee handbook, it is part of the organization’s DNA, and is celebrated, rewarded and enforced openly.

Is your organization Enron – Wells Fargo Proof?

 

 

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It’s the Customer Stupid!

Organizations today are quickly realizing the key to future growth and the accompanying increase in revenues requires a laser focus by the entire company on one simple place, It’s The Customer Stupid! But how do we achieve that focus? There are many steps along the journey, here are the five most critical.

 

  • Defined Customer Experience Strategy
  • Organizational Role Clarity
  • Business Intelligence (BI), Measurements – Key CX Indicators
  • Customer Identification and Understanding
  • Extreme Execution

 

  1. Defined Customer Experience Strategy –

Emotional connections are stronger than logical connections. Customers that have a strong emotional connection with an organization are relationship loyal. They think of the organization as often as a 5th grader with their first crush. They will pay a premium to do business with that organization because they feel the value. Before creating our CX Strategy we must fully define and understand the answers to these 3 simple questions;

  • How do we want our customers to feel about us?
  • When do we want our customers to think about us?
  • How much to we value this?

 

  1. Organizational Role Clarity

Perhaps one of the most difficult challenges for CEO’s in organizations of all sizes is to achieve and maintain cultural alignment at all levels. Unfortunately, there is no other path to becoming customer centric than complete cultural alignment on the customer. This is far more than a couple of additional lines added to everyone’s job descriptions. It’s also more than adding a few additional productivity measurements to scorecard. Each role in the organization must be at its core, focused on how the specifics role requirements contribute to the customer’s feelings about the organization.

 

“If there’s any activity taking place within the organization that doesn’t specifically improve the customers experience with us, we ought not be doing it.”                    

                                                          -Ken Goodnight, VP Express Scripts

 

  1. (BI), Measurements –

If we don’t fully understand our numbers, we don’t understand our business. This is more than speaking to figures on a spreadsheet, it refers to an end to end understanding of the moving parts under the numbers. Once we understand the numbers and what they mean, we are ready to identify what to measure.

A well-defined CX Strategy with clear role definitions contains specific points of measure based on business intelligence and analytics. These measures are leading indicators of the effectiveness of the overall strategy, and is comprised two separate types of measures. Internal and External. Internally focused measures link to specific deliverables of identified performance indicators, an example in a call center could be the Average Speed of Answer (ASA).

Externally focused measures are the ultimate validation of our internal measures, confirmation we are measuring the right performance indicators, and headed in the right direction. Many organizations use some version of Net Promotor Score (NPS), the Customer Satisfaction Index, or other customer satisfaction tool.

No matter the tool or method that is selected, make no mistake, both internal and external measures are critical to success.

 

  1. Customer Identification and Understanding –

If we have a million customers, we have a million individuals with a million unique expectations of their journey with us. Our chief objective is to identify, understand and exceed each one of those expectations. This is not to suggest a one size fits all model; in fact, it is that exact approach that results in the organizations failure to make emotional connections with its customers. This is where the alignment of culture, people, extreme execution and technology is critical.

 

  1. Extreme Execution Stupid –

No matter how well thought out the strategy, no matter how detailed the planning, how accurate the measurements, or how aligned the culture, poor execution Trumps all.

 

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Is Your Organization Customer Centric?

Sitting in the airport preparing to board my flight to Dallas, Texas where I’ve been invited to speak at this year’s CCNG Executive Summit #CCNG, I can’t help but indulge in a bit of people watching.

 

My attention is quickly captured by the load angry sounding voice of a female airport or airport vendor employee, whose job is to provide wheelchair assistance to the passengers boarding and disembarking the airlines. Her frustration it appears was focused on the repeated calls over her radio for additional chair support at the very gate she had just arrived at. Unfortunately, the individual calling for the added support was unaware of her arrival. In her fit of frustration, the employee could be heard verbally berating her peer over the radio saying in an angry rude tone, “I wish you would call me one more time”. The implication clearly being some harm would follow the additional request. Now the thing to keep in mind is this was not a private conversation, remember I heard it over all the other terminal noise while sitting some 40-50 feet away, and believe me, my hearing isn’t that good!

 

Once the entire show was over, and all passengers had been wheeled away my attention quickly focused to how uncomfortable the airline’s guests (passengers) must have felt. I couldn’t imagine this poor woman sitting in her wheelchair hearing the employee’s obvious frustration with her job. Her job at that moment was to transport the passenger point A to point B. I wondered to myself what the CEO of the company employing her would think if he witnessed this behavior, would it be in line with the culture of his organization? Was it part of his/her sales presentation to the airport when bidding for the contract? Did the training received by the employee accurately explain the culture, what is expected, and how to deliver exceptional service?

 

A Customer Centric Culture is one that constantly reinforces the message of how customers are to be treated, how their journey or interaction with your organization and all its employees is to look and feel like.  Alignment of Who you are, What you do and How you do it is essential to delivering an exceptional customer experience.

 

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What is the Future of Customer Support?

Customer support is critical to business regardless of size, how a customer perceives the support and service they receive will determine the success or failure of the business.

 

According to a recent survey conducted by Xerox of more than 6,000 technologies, media and telecommunication consumers across five countries, 42% of people believe there will be no call centers by 2025. Pretty amazing considering that one in four consumers in the world chooses to call into a call center for service, the number is higher in the US at one in three consumers choosing the phone to obtain support.

 

The future of customer support appears to be highly driven by technology vs. human to human (H2H) factors. The “Call Centers” of tomorrow will be more like Consumer or Customer Interaction Centers where customer journeys are monitored real-time, and disruptions are anticipated and avoided – or at minimum mitigated rapidly.

 

Customer interactions will be focused on journey customization rather than disruption recovery. THINK AMAZON! The company has done an excellent job of presenting us with real life shopping experiences that reveal the futuristic interactions of tomorrow. Amazon knows it’s customers. They monitor their journey and experiences, building a strong level of confidence in the consumer space for flawless delivery of service. Most customers are not even aware that Amazon operates call centers. In fact, most consumers only think of Amazon twice in any one shopping experience. The first being when they want to purchase ANYTHING, and the second when that ANYTHING arrives in the brown box on their doorstep. The brown box always arrives.

 

Proactive real-time Customer Interaction Centers are how successful companies will support their customers and deliver top notch customer interactions within the next 5 years.

 

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