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HKYou are richer than you think part 1
In my previous blog entries I have argued about the validity of the People > Service > Profit idea, the importance of Hiring Right and the fact that often good people are stopped by bad processes or bad management. I am obviously of the view that the road to success for great customer service and experience excellence goes through People Management that is aligned with strategies that make customer service and customer experience into a sustainable strategic differentiator.
Today’s business environment is constantly changing as companies work to stay competitive. But change only happens when people change their thinking, beliefs, and behaviours. This is hard and requires constant effort from employees and executives. Forrester analyst Claire Schooley reports that “Seven in ten - seventy percent - of change management initiatives fail. That is a dramatically high rate of failure.” It could happen to you unless you take into account that any change in business process or strategic direction is strongly related to personal change — that means your people — and this is often the component that gets shortchanged.
This first of two blog entries pursues the line of thought that organizations often fail to realize the impact of change on the employees it will affect. This can be change due to process re-design or strategies and initiatives for sharpening Customer Focus. They often do not plan and execute carefully enough to address the people issues through all phases of change management.
That means that frequently people are insufficiently informed and engaged and therefore not enabled or allowed to contribute what they could otherwise bring to the table, based on their experience, knowledge and creativity (that everybody has). Over the more than 25 years I have been involved in many types of organizations I have developed the somewhat cynical view that more often than not “the enemy is within” and that many organizations unwittingly go to great lengths to give the competition a leg up. I will also be so bold as to estimate that thus many organizations are not getting one-third to one quarter of the payroll dollars (and benefits plus overheads) they spend.
My message to a great deal of organization is therefore what it says in the headline (a tagline of a ubiquitous Canadian bank campaign): You Are Richer Than You Think... but you are likely not getting what you pay for to your people. Such organizations unfortunately don’t know what they don’t know and what they could get from the people they are paying anyway.
In my second blog I will cover some pragmatic suggestions on Communications that can help address such low return on their payroll/benefit investment.
Eric Fraterman is a Customer-Focus transformist with a wide and deep customer service consulting experience in more than twenty industries and six countries over 25 years. He helps organizations create a Customer-Focus advantage for gaining and retaining business through exceptional customer service and experience.He can be reached at [email protected] .Websites: www.CustomerFocusConsult.com & www.CustomerExperienceWorkshop.netLinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/440216ericfraterman
