CASE STUDY: CUSTOMER SERVICE
The Company:
This is a large global shipping company with locations around the world in a competitive industry. This is a competitive industry. One of the highest strategic priorities for this company was to "be the best" — to become known as the company that provided excellent, consistent service to its customers.
The Situation
Customers called different company locations around the world at different times, for tracking purposes and issue resolution. They encountered inconsistent customer service which caused them to either lose their patience or take their business elsewhere.
The Goal
Our mandated goal was to meet the strategic initiative of the organization, namely to turn around customer service from less than adequate to "the best".
The Solution
We needed first to understand the customers of the organization, the nature of customer dissatisfaction and barriers to providing consistent service as seen through the eyes of the service managers and the front line service providers.
The Bridgewater Group held focus groups with service managers and front line service providers and conducted interviews senior leadership around the world.
In making recommendations to the VP of Customer Support, World Wide, we developed our charter for the initiative:
- To design a learning and development initiative that would teach all service managers and providers the same techniques and to give them all the same tools they could apply — on a daily basis — for delivering consistent customer service.
- To honor and respect cultural norms around the world as we implemented the initiative. (This did not interfere with our focus on consistency but it did impact the way we conducted the training.)
- To design the initiative as a system for ensuring impact on the organization's goals.
We custom designed and implemented a training program for service managers. As a part of that training, we also trained the organization's trainers who then rolled-out the training to service providers.
The model of management support our client chose was highly successful , in that it reinforced the client company's commitment to the program and its staff.
The Bridgewater Group trained 151 managers in North America, Asia, the Middle East and Europe; and eight of the client's trainers around the world who trained 900 front line providers during the first year. It continued to be implemented throughout the world by the organization's trainers.
Outcomes
- Fewer service errors
- Problems were resolved with one call instead of multiple interaction
- Improved patience and understanding of people in different cultures = more support cross culturally and less tension among world location
- Customer satisfaction demonstrated by loyal customers with long term repeat business
- The company was the recipient of a prestigious industry award in the for their "Excellence in Customer Service".
- The program was implemented company-wide as a result of the demonstrated higher level service skills, (the whole company is a service organization, whether individuals deal directly with external customers or work indirectly with them through other employees); improved communication and morale; more teamwork; and improved customersatisfaction ratings.
