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Revisiting our Values

October 21, 2022

World Values Day, 20th October, is a day to celebrate all things values. With that in mind, let’s revisit why values are so important in an organizational context. Putting values at the centre of everything an organization does helps to create a strong and authentic brand. This is particularly relevant for service organisations where people are a core element of the proposition.

But the focus on values needs to be sincere and authentic rather than a lip service PR campaign. Witness the negative reaction to the McDonald’s marketing initiative of flipping its golden arches upside down on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram in honour of International Women’s Day.

What are values?

So, if values are critically important, it is a good idea to remind yourself what they are. The word values now appears so commonplace that sometimes the meaning is forgotten. Core values are traits or qualities that represent deeply held beliefs. They reflect what is important to us, and what motivates us. For an organization, values define what it stands for and how it is seen and experienced by all stakeholders (customers, employees, service partners, suppliers, and communities).

Values act as guiding principles – as a behavioural and decision-making compass. In an organization, values (explicit or implicit) guide every person every day. They are the foundation for the way things work, providing the basis of the corporate culture.

For individuals, as well as organizations, values sit at the gateway between our inner and outer worlds. They describe what is fundamentally important and meaningful to us and relate directly to our sense of purpose and to our needs as individuals to survive and thrive.

Richard Barrett and colleagues differentiate between positive values and potentially limiting values. Honesty, trust, and accountability are positive values, whereas blame, revenge, and manipulation are potentially limiting. Positive values are described as virtues and are strengths that we can draw on to build resources and resourcefulness. Potentially limiting values emanate from the conscious or subconscious beliefs of the ego. In this chapter, we focus on positive values.

“Values are the ideals that give meaning to our lives that are reflected through the priorities we choose and that we act on consistently and repeatedly.” Brian Hall

In summary, people are shaped by what they care about, and where given a choice, will engage in activities that enable them to survive and thrive in any situation. We can live core values to good effect. We can use them to provide:
• a reference for decision making
• clarity and increased awareness about individual behaviours (self and others)
• an unambiguous environment for new employees to start off on the right track
• stories to build the heritage and folklore of the organization
• consistency – viewed from within or from the outside

The values-based customer

Research in this area over several years by Forrester confirms that customers explicitly consider company values such as employment and manufacturing practices, political and social stances, and commitment to certain causes or beliefs when choosing products to buy or brands to associate with.
Customers now believe that company values go beyond a tagline and are reflected in everything a firm does or says – from its hiring practices to strategic partnerships, to supply chain management and advertising tone.

52% of customers, across generations, consider company values explicitly when making purchases. The phenomenon applies across all income levels and nearly four in 10 values-based consumers have an annual income of $50,000 or less.

As you would expect, although consumers increasingly factor company values into their buying decisions, they consider these principles alongside elements like price, convenience, previous experience, and accessibility. We are not suggesting that, in the Values Economy, every single person makes decisions based on values above any other consideration.

However, Forrester’s research suggests that about one-fifth of consumers (across industry sectors) put values first and that the majority of consumers, when they perceive brands and products to be comparable in terms of price and quality, see values as a differentiator which can tip their purchasing decision.

The implications for this more values-based approach are profound. Potentially, what an organization stands for and believes in could become the buyer’s primary consideration, above the quality and value for money of the products or services offered.

So what?

Looking from the best case to the worst case, you can see for yourself the way you can harness core values for good or ignore core values at your peril. The research from Forrester reinforces what we have known for some time.

The key factor common to companies that have delivered sustained high performance – at the top of their market for 100 years or more – is a base of values that was strong enough to provide the employees of the company with a common bond – a purpose beyond profit.

SERVICEBRAND

At SERVICEBRAND Global we believe that values-driven service is the key to sustainable performance. It is quite simple although not easy to do. When done well, everyone who interacts with your organization, whether they are a customer, employee, service provider, investor or even a member of the local community, has a clear understanding of who your organization is and what you stand for. If you are starting out on your values journey, or wanting to bring to life the values you already have, why not see how SERVICEBRAND Global can help.

Getting Personal with CX

October 14, 2022

“Customer service shouldn’t just be a department; it should be the entire company.” — Tony Hsieh

Tony Hsieh’s quote sums up why the premium hospitality sector was such a great training ground for my understanding and leadership of customer experience strategy. In good hotels every single person understands the importance of their role in delivering a great guest service. Products and services are important, but in a world of near limitless choice, they aren’t the defining factor in a customer’s decision-making process. When it comes to getting their needs fulfilled, the more positive an experience the customer has, the more likely they are to return again.

Delivering a great customer experience (CX) can have a dramatic positive impact on business revenue, customer loyalty, employee engagement and retention, brand perception and organizational growth. And because we all have experience of being a customer, many people overestimate their ability to be able to design and implement good CX. The reality is that the journey is hard work, littered with challenges.

The journey to great and consistent CX is a marathon, not a sprint. A process of becoming that is never quite over. Despite rapidly shifting customer demands, it is possible to set in place strategies to enable you to shift and flow with your customers, rather than be reactive, or try to force them into a way of doing things that is not comfortable for them.

Time to get personal

Data is not something you might readily associate with the, sometimes lofty, concept of CX but it is often a fantastic starting point. Customers don’t mind having their data collected if it benefits their future experience with a brand or organization.

The more you collect measurement and insight from your customers, the better equipped you become to make further improvements that customers want. This is far better than making decisions based on personal preferences and/or on a whim.

Consider the different ways in which you might collect this data rather than rely on one format. This can range from social media sentiment analysis, surveys, mystery shop programs, focus groups and informal feedback. When these tools are used well, you will be surprised just how many people will voluntarily offer you feedback.

Once you have the data, you’ll be able to better target personalised and individual marketing to specific groups or specific people. By getting personal, you not only create a huge amount of lifetime customer value, but you also create free brand ambassadors, spreading their experience of your organization to everyone they meet.

A standard yet personal approach

Standardising your approach to CX can feel counterintuitive in a market where personalised contact and touch points are championed as a way of delivering great customer experience. The challenge is, customers should never feel that other customers are getting better service than they are, for no reason. To put this into practical terms, everybody understands that a passenger who has paid for a first-class ticket on a train will receive a different, better service. However, if a passenger in the same standard of the train receives preferential treatment, people will understandably feel aggrieved.

Find out through customer feedback what it is that customers most love about the services or goods they receive, and consciously channel that information into your advertising and touch point copy. Be sure to test how your messaging is being received by your customers frequently. Some messaging is good for a campaign or specific product but doesn’t read well as a lifetime statement.

It is important to nail down your communication and design elements so that all your customer facing messaging speaks to the heart and values of the organization. The approach must reflect customer needs and desires, but also be liveable by your employees. Each and every customer should be able to have a personal yet standardized experience at each of your stores or locations, no matter who they are served by or where. Your employees are your organization, brand ambassadors conveying your organization’s ethos and values every day.

The right person for the job

Customers know what authenticity feels like, they can often tell the difference between when an employee is there for the love of the job and when they are only there for a wage slip. Your customers can’t have a good experience if there is a lack of consistency or clarity within the employee pool. To make it an even bigger challenge, this also applies across geographies, time (of day, and zones) and channels.

One you know what your customers love most about your business, this can inform your employee experience throughout (hiring, training, reward and recognition, performance review etc). Regardless of the wage being paid, you might remember how it feels when an employee is vocal about the job being a ‘place holder’ to better things. Let’s just say that your perception of the brand is not enhanced!

On the other hand, you also want to avoid employees being frozen by indecision from fear and/or micromanagement. Building values-led people processes and then trusting your employees to deliver the required level of service is the way to do this.

SERVICEBRAND

At SERVICEBRAND Global we believe in customer experience and the unique power doing it correctly has in building lifetime customer value for your organization. Whether you are right at the beginning of your CX journey, or in need of fresh thinking, or faced with competitors who are delivering a better customer service than you, be in touch and see how we might get you on the right track to values-led service for sustained performance.

Balancing Workload and Productivity

October 8, 2022

Organizations and the leaders that run them expect a certain a level of productivity from their employees. The choices of competition are endless, and the smallest issues can break brand loyalty. In this high-demand and on-demand society, it is no surprise employees are driven to be as productive as possible.

But knowing you need to achieve certain levels of productivity, and actually putting in place effective workload strategies to make the right output possible, are very different things. Your organizations biggest assets are its employees. They are the people who create your products and services, who face the customers and build brand awareness and loyalty with them. If your employees are burned out or disengaged from unmanageable productivity deadlines and workload beyond their capacity to cope, your business is in danger.

Setting your priorities

On average 80% of the average workday is spent doing tasks with little or no value, with the remaining 20% bearing the weight of all the important value adding tasks. Statistics like these don’t mean your employees are lazy, they mean there is a lack of focus within organizations as to what their priorities should be.

Your workplace should be an encouraging and engaging one. Encourage your employees to review all the tasks they undertake and have them report back to you with complete honest about what ‘feels’ useful and productive, and what feels like a box ticking exercise or a waste of time doing something that could potential be spent better elsewhere.

‘Oh, but they won’t be honest because they like wasting time.’ There are three big problems with statements like these. The first is that the majority of employees want to be working while they are at work, time runs slower when avoiding tasks than it does when fully in the flow of a creative and engaging workplace.

The second is wrong thinking on the part of the leader. If you think this way about any of your employees, you need to address your hiring, training, and monitoring practices. There should be no one in your organisation that doesn’t want to be there. And the third issue, if you have people being paid to do random or pointless tasks, you need to get honest about it and either redevelop their remit, find another place for them, or let them go.

Keeping track of time

Never have a meeting when an email would do. Of course, it is important to meet with employees regularly. But too much oversight kills creativity, wastes time, and makes employees feel like their time is no valuable if it can be so easily wasted.

Your organization is likely to have set deadlines and dates for deliverables. Time tracking and scheduling software is your best friend. But not when it becomes more important to get things done to the timetable that are only achievable by cutting corners or burning out.

Your time tracking should be a supporting tool that provides guidance and assistance to workers, it should not become their all-powerful overlord. Let your employees see your goals, your plans, and the schedule in which you hope to achieve them and give them voice as to what is suitable and achievable. Let go of a ‘if I give an inch, they’ll take a mile’ mentality, and trust that the people you have hired and rigorously trained, want to be there, and want to help you succeed.

Run before you can walk

This may seem counter intuitive, but it is always better to attack the difficult tasks first. By prioritising the most complex deliverables first, you allow more time to fix any issues that arise later on. People are often better mentally and physically in the morning than later on in the day. Set the hard work, the difficult tasks in the morning and let the afternoon or late part of the shift be dedicated to the more monotonous and repetitive work. In this way you’ll establish a relationship with your employees that shows you care about balancing their productivity with their workload.

A best practice SERVICEBRAND

Nordstrom, Inc. is an American luxury department store chain founded in 1901 by John W. Nordstrom and Carl F. Wallin. It originated as a shoe store and evolved into a full-line retailer with departments for clothing, footwear, handbags, jewellery, accessories, cosmetics, and fragrances. Some stores feature home furnishings and wedding departments, and several have in-house cafes, restaurants, and espresso bars.

As of 2020, Nordstrom operates 354 stores, including 100 full-line stores, in 40 U.S. states and four Canadian provinces. The corporate headquarters and flagship store are in the former Frederick & Nelson department store building in Seattle, Washington; a second flagship store is located near Columbus Circle in New York City. Its subsidiaries include the 247-store off-price Nordstrom Rack division, two clearance stores, five Nordstrom Local service hubs and the members-only online store HauteLook. There is also a comprehensive online service across the portfolio.

In August 2020, Nordstrom employed 68,000 people (full time and part time employees). In 2019, the company had a $15.86 billion revenue in the year and profit of $564 million. They hosted 800 million online visitors annually and 35 million instore customers.

Somebody who possibly knows Nordstrom nearly as well as the Nordstrom family is Robert Spector, the author of “The Nordstrom Way” book series, who has interviewed three generations of the Nordstrom family, and is an international keynote speaker on the Nordstrom culture of service. We invited Robert to collaborate with us for this mini case study and have been fortunate enough to receive his insight into the company for this chapter.

This quote from Robert sums it up well:

People often ask me: “What is the essence of The Nordstrom Way?”

My answer: “Everything Nordstrom does is centred around taking care of the customer and giving
them value that will last a lifetime. Whatever channel Nordstrom uses, the personal touch of customer service has to be a part of it.” They nod in understanding, then follow up with, “And?”
To which I reply. “That’s it.”
In this blog, I would like to share some brief insights into the way Nordstrom works using the SERRVICEBRAND framework of Brand Identity, Employee Engagement, Customer Experience, Systems & Processes and Measurement & Insight:

Brand Identity

Delivering a great customer experience is at the heart of the Nordstrom business model. The company’s mission is “To continue our dedication to providing a unique range of products, exceptional customer service, and great experiences.” When asked about the company and its goals, Erik B. Nordstrom, President, and CEO, stated “Above all, our number-one goal remains focused on improving service for customers so that people feel even better about the time they spend with us.” In summary, customer experience is the brand.

Values are also of paramount importance. “We grew up being taught to respect all our customers and to the extent that they have different opinions, that means we can’t have an opinion on anything that’s personal or political,” said Pete. “ We were always Switzerland [neutral]. We would never offer an opinion. But today, you have to stand up for something. We can’t have a personal connection with customers and employees if we don’t have an authentic set of core beliefs and values.”

This approach has resonated internally within its company culture and, externally, with its loyal customer base and is a great example of the SERVICEBRAND approach being applied in practice: alignment of brand identity, employee engagement and customer experience.

Employee engagement

The goal is to first attract, and then retain people who share and abide by the Nordstrom values because it is understood that only those kinds of people will be happy working for the company. As Bruce Nordstrom says, “We can hire nice people and teach them to sell, but we can’t hire salespeople and teach them to be nice. We believe in the philosophy of ‘hire the smile, train the skill.’” And Jamie Nordstrom, President of Stores, tells students that they should “join a company whose values align with yours.”

Every Nordstrom employee (whether they work on the sales floor or in a support position) is focused on making people feel good, and the culture is centred on creating an environment where employees feel supported and empowered to do just that. Employees are encouraged to work as though it is their name on the door, thinking of themselves as an entrepreneur who Nordstrom is providing with the tools (store, merchandise, technology) to build their own business. Then, they do what they feel is right to build lasting relationships with their customers and provide them with an outstanding experience in keeping with a long-term view of the lifetime value of the customer. Employees are empowered to do what it takes to make customers feel good and have just one rule in all situations that gives them the freedom and flexibility they need to make that happen: Use good judgment.

Customer Experience

Nordstrom’s customer service is legendary, and there is plenty of supporting evidence, whether it is a story about searching through vacuum cleaner bags to return a customer’s lost diamond, driving a customer’s forgotten bags to the airport before their flight, selling a single shoe or Nordstrom employees helping mall shoppers carry purchases from other stores to their cars. One of the most well-known Nordstrom customer service stories is about a man who wanted to return a set of tyres which had been purchased at the store that occupied the same space prior to Nordstrom moving in.

After some discussion, the Nordstrom store manager decided to allow the customer to return the tyres there. All these stories are examples of how the company gives employees the empowerment referred to earlier in this chapter and the autonomy to make their own decisions instead of having an expensive and time-consuming authorization process. Similarly, employees are encouraged to create and make use of their client lists – they personally notify customers of special events and sales through mail or email and send handwritten thank-you notes to new customers.

A seamless blend

In addition, whilst these stories are generally from store settings, The Nordstroms say they are channel agnostic: they don’t have a channel strategy; they have a customer strategy. They think of the customer having an imaginary seat in the boardroom and are always seeking to make life easier for the customer not the organization. In this new omnichannel world, Nordstrom is reimagining the role of the physical store, which is now digitized and complements the online channel.

They are seeking to seamlessly blend the sensory experience of the physical store and the personalization and convenience of online shopping, continually adding value to the customer experience to be relevant and attractive to customers.

Systems and processes

Nordstrom is embracing technology in its drive to deliver the best possible customer service. In fact, about 30% of capital expenditure is earmarked for developing the Internet infrastructure. The key point though, is that any technological advancement put in place is always for the benefit of the customer rather than for any other reason.

The systems and processes in the organization are there to support the Nordstrom salespeople and customers. As an example, the merchandising team has been adapted to be more responsive to regional preferences, while at the same time leveraging the company’s size and expertise on a national level. The perpetual inventory management system enables a salesperson to track down an item for a customer from anywhere in the company in the time it takes to ring up the sale.

Measurement & Insight

This area is focused on, guess what: the customer!

Over the past five years, Nordstrom has transformed the way that data is used to drive stronger outcomes for the business. The start point was a recognition that marketing expense was outpacing sales, and yet the rate of customer acquisition was declining at the same time. The approach to measurement and insight was re centred on the customer to measure what really matters.

By reorganizing around the customer, the mindset has shifted from one of last click return on ad spend to one of incremental marketing. As a result, expenses are now in line with sales, efficiency has increased, and the rate of acquisition has gone up.

Key SERVICEBRAND insights

The ‘textbook’ application of the SERVICEBRAND approach; where the customer experience is the ultimate objective and, in effect, the brand itself, delivered by brand ambassadors, and these three elements are supported by systems and processes, and measurement and insight.
How Nordstrom has adjusted the delivery of the customer experience to suit changing tastes and demographics whilst staying true to their high-level purpose and values over time.

The longevity of the humble, ‘work hard every day’ ethic of Nordstrom founder Johan (John) Wilhelm Nordstrom in spite of the adulation received about the level of customer service provided.

This blog is based on Chapter 17 Nordstrom The Values Economy: How to deliver purpose-driven service for sustained performance: Williams, Alan, Williams, Samuel: 9781912555802: Amazon.com: Books

SERVICEBRAND

At SERVICEBRAND Global, we have a deep understanding of how to align the three areas of Brand Identity, Employee Engagement and Customer Experience supported by Systems & Processes and Measurement & Insight. Contact us to see how we can help you create strategies to dramatically improve your organizational effectiveness and performance.

Measurement & Insight

September 30, 2022

“You must get involved to have an impact. No one is impressed with the won-lost record of the referee.” John H. Holcomb

To have an impact means to have a marked influence – a strong effect on someone or something. Impact is often associated with measurement and reward in organizations, and the phrase “What gets measured gets done” has been attributed to Peter Drucker, Tom Peters, W. Edwards Deming, Lord Kelvin and others. It is true – impact is only seen historically, after the fact.

We define Measurement & Insight as the efficient and effective use of data to inform future development of the organization at all levels, including collection, interpretation, communication and decision-making. The purpose of Measurement & Insight is to understand what impact the organization has delivered in different areas and to enable decisions that will create the most value in the future.

Be careful what you ask for

In the decades to come, when organizational management from the 1970s to the 2010s is looked back on, it is likely that ‘metrics’ will be a key topic. We think that the use of measurement-based approaches such as KPIs (key performance indicators), SLAs (service level agreements), incentivized pay schemes and others might be viewed as, at best, misguided and clumsy and, at worst, crude and ineffective.
We are strong supporters of measurement and insight as an aid to decision-making and accountability. Measurement and insight in themselves are not the issue.

The digital revolution has made it much easier and cheaper to measure multiple dimensions of an organization’s activities and this has led to what has seemed like an almost obsessive, simplistic application on the basis that it is ‘the answer.’ But metrics are a support to, rather than a substitute for, thinking. It is the simplistic way in which they are applied by organizations’ leaders that can cause issues, and sometimes catastrophic damage. Measurement is immensely powerful – either for good or ill – and the outcome is dependent on the level and quality of leadership involvement, just like in the quote above.

“Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you feel the impact.” Barack Obama

The American Nobel Prize winner for economics Joseph Stiglitz observes that “What we measure affects what we do. If we have the wrong metrics, we will strive for the wrong things” – or, in other words, if you don’t measure the right thing, you don’t do the right thing. The notion that you can’t manage what you don’t measure is a trap. Deciding what to measure is so much more important than the measuring itself.

We are in favour of a broader approach to measurement and insight, and we admire the way that, if used as intended, the balanced scorecard has stood the test of time since it was proposed in 1992. The triple bottom line (otherwise called the TBL or 3BL) is a more recent accounting framework with three parts: social, environmental (or ecological) and financial. Some organizations have adopted the TBL framework to evaluate their performance in a broader perspective to create greater business value.

Measuring and sustaining behaviour

An over-reliance on simplistic measurement by numbers is dangerous. Impact also needs to be assessed at a less quantitative, more qualitative level. A combination of carefully considered metrics or quantitative measures (to provide direction) and a collection of qualitative data (e.g. narrative, story and open comments) clarifying the impact on individuals and groups of stakeholders provides a much richer picture of impact and the context within which this happens.

While stories might not seem ‘measurable’ by numbers, management educator Henry Mintzberg proposed starting “from the premise that we can’t measure what matters.” Mintzberg suggested that this gives leaders the best chance of realistically facing up to their challenges. Stories are a particularly fruitful way of communicating.

SERVICEBRAND

At SERVICEBRAND Global, we believe in the Measurement & Insight is the fifth (and final) Element of the SERVICEBRAND approach and is applied equally to the previous four Elements: Brand Identity, Employee Engagement, Customer Experience and Systems & Processes.

The SERVICEBRAND approach helps to capture and present your data and the insight generated from it as ‘intelligence’ to make decisions. If you are not making decisions based on your measurement and insight, why are you collecting the data? If this is an area you would like to improve, please give us a call, and see how we can help you.

Customer Journey Mapping

September 23, 2022

“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology, not the other way around.” Steve Jobs

One of the most helpful tools for Customer Experience Management is customer journey mapping, used to understand and define the customer experience. There are many variations of this technique, and our aim is to highlight some points for you to bear in mind if you think this might be a useful initiative. Your customer’s journey is each of the interactions they have with your organization through your various touch points. This could be instore, via email or social media, the in-person service they receive or the online interactions they have with your employees.

65% of customers are more influenced by great experience than by advertising. If you get your customer journey right, you are more likely to create happy and loyal customers. Many of these will go on to be excellent word of mouth ambassadors for your brand, as well as repeat customers.

How to map your map

Start by considering the end-to-end journey of the customer, even if this includes areas over which you have little or no control. If you are a train company, the local car park is part of your customers’ experience. It will affect customers’ perception of your offer (even if it is provided by a third party) and might have an impact on your business (e.g., the car park is always full, is badly maintained or is prone to vandalism and there is another train station close by).

Common sense

At each stage of the customer journey, all the senses need to be considered to design and implement the optimum customer experience. In a banking client’s office, we discovered that mail room employees wheeled a trolley through the reception area, where important visitors were awaiting their host. The trolley had the loudest squeaky wheels you can imagine and clearly this did not support and reinforce the smooth, sophisticated image the bank wished to portray.

The senses can be used to emphasize the uniqueness of a branded customer experience. Abercrombie & Fitch was one of the first businesses to use scents in their stores and in their marketing. In Ritz Carlton hotels you will hear employees say, “It’s my pleasure” and never “That’s Ok” or “No problem”. Tiffany’s iconic shade of ‘robin’s egg’ blue, trademarked as Tiffany Blue is ubiquitous on everything from jewellery boxes to shopping bags to advertising.

Know, do, feel

It is also important to think about what you want the customer to know, do and feel at each stage of the journey or at key touchpoints. Using the example of a hotel registration, welcoming a guest back to the hotel and providing them with a registration card for their signature lets them know that you have remembered their previous visit, prompts them to provide their signature and makes them feel valued as a returning guest. The key card can then be issued in a small card ‘wallet’ displaying their room number and signature so they can present it to charge any services to their room account during their stay. This wallet can also include other information about the hotel’s facilities, and the receptionist can offer to make a dinner reservation before directing the guest to their room.

SERVICEBRAND

At SERVICEBRAND Global, we help organizations to develop their customer journey maps as a foundational tool in their Customer Experience strategy. If you think this is an area that could help improve customer satisfaction, loyalty and sales, why not see how the SERVICEBRAND approach could help you?

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Customer Experience and Growth

Research into the value of understanding the customer experience is consistently returning findings that show a huge percentage of customers are willing to pay more to have a better, easier, and more comfortable experience with the brands and organizations they interact with.

It is not just the customers benefiting from more care and attention being placed into the customer experience. Studies also show a huge increase in revenue in the three years after organizations have implemented a successful customer experience strategy.

Despite the positive research results, it seems many organizations are still reluctant to embrace the idea of investing in a quality customer experience strategy.

What is CX?

Despite customer experience (CX) being spoken of as the next frontier in business growth, many leaders and organizations don’t fully understand just how many elements feed into the experience customers have when they interact with a business.

CX can be considered as the journey your customer takes from the moment they become aware of your brand, to the moment they decide they want no other service but yours. It used to be that advertising companies would convince the customer of their need for your offering. But with such a competitive market in the present day, the onus is now on the organization to offer the best experience possible to customer, to keep them loyal.

When organizations are offering slightly different versions of the same thing, the experience becomes the key and defining factor in purchase decisions. If you don’t have a CX strategy, you are leaving it to chance and randomization as to whether your customers are all having the same positive experience.

Service or experience?

It is easy to think that the terms customer experience and customer service are the same or interchangeable. But they aren’t.

While it is true that most customers will engage with an employee as their first port of call, perhaps making a telephone call, or speaking to a service agent or sales assistant, this service is not the whole experience. These interactions just allow time in the customer experience journey to offer great service and hopefully leave the customer feeling like they had a great experience of the brand.

Customer service is what happens ‘in the moment’. Customer experience is what happens throughout: the comments and suggestions from friends or family to try a place they have really loved; a built understanding in the head of the customer that this is the brand for them before they’ve even had their first physical interaction; a strong preconception that is then reinforced by the excellent service they receive.

Anton, an attendee at a workshop I delivered summed it up so well “A service you receive, an experience you take away.”

If the service doesn’t align with their desired experience, then you’ll lose a customer. It really is that simple. What you say you’ll do, matters.

But it is crucial to avoid the mistake of developing a CX strategy at the heart of your business, that is never supported nor trained into employee behaviour. In the Values Economy, customers believe their felt experience and the experiences of other customers than they believe the official corporate messaging. If what you say is not reinforced by the experience you deliver ‘on the ground’, at best, customers will be confused, and, at worst, they will feel intentionally misled.

Should I stay or should I go?

Building customer loyalty is one of the biggest challenges for any organization. It is often organic in nature and will only be successful in a sustained way with sound underpinning intention. Designing a CX strategy around cheap tricks or financial incentives to achieve customer loyalty might deliver results in the short term but this will only last for so long.

It is much better to design and create a strategy that studies and understands the needs of the customer, and then creates a pathway to bring them true joy.

When you think of businesses you have loyalty towards, is it really because of the product, or is it because of the service? There is a great deal of power in knowing that, whenever you interact with a brand, you are going to get the same experience. It is why people only stay in one hotel chain, have a favourite fast-food restaurant, go to the same brand of coffee shop in every place they visit.

Customers ask for very little in the way of experience, and give their loyalty in return. If your business hasn’t been honouring that loyalty, are your surprised that your customers are happy to leave?

SERVICEBRAND

At SERVICEBRAND Global, we believe that customer experience provides the life blood for any organization. Without customers, organizations do not exist. We help progressive leaders to create and implement CX strategies to understand where they are now and help them get to where they want to be… in practice. If you would benefit from help to put an effective CX strategy in place, why not see how the SERVICEBRAND approach can help your business.

Organizational Systems & Processes

September 6, 2022

“Systems and processes are essential to keep the crusade going, but they should not replace the crusade.” Simon Sinek

Organizations are complex adaptive systems. They consist of interconnected, interwoven components or sets of things that work together as part of a mechanism or interconnecting and dynamic network to achieve an overall goal.

If you take away or change a component it affects the whole system. Ralph Stacey, an eminent figure in the field of complexity, points out that all human systems are ‘self-organizing’ and not open to control. Interactions between humans are co-created and emergent, with multiple possible outcomes at each point of engagement. A complex environment consists of any number of competing factors, combinations of agents and potential outcomes.

The Ralph Stacey Complexity model

Supporting the right functions

The components of the organization system can be viewed in different ways. One perspective is a collection of different functions where the Human Resources (HR) team could be one component, the service delivery team another, the outsourced supply chain another and so on.

These functions are interdependent, so if there is a high performing service delivery team, but the HR processes and procedures are not working well, then the performance of the whole organization is lessened.

“Systems are not sexy – but they really DO drive everything we do!” Carrie Wilkerson

Systems & Processes is the fourth ‘Element’ of the SERVICEBRAND approach. We think of this as the organization’s infrastructure: a collection of ‘assets’ assisting the strategic alignment and co-ordinated execution of the Brand Identity, Employee Engagement and Customer Experience Elements.

We define the Systems & Processes ‘Element’ as the arrangement of resources, communication framework, technology infrastructure and governance to enable and support delivery of a brand aligned Customer Experience. Resources refers to people, functions, information, finance, property, and equipment.

Systems in support

The focus on an alignment and support role is critical because, otherwise, there is a risk that areas within your systems and processes can achieve a disproportionate level of importance to the detriment of the brand identity, employee engagement or customer experience. Can you relate to these quotes?

– “Your details cannot be located because the system needs a case number.”
– “I cannot serve you with a cup of hot water because it is against the company health & safety policy.”
– “Do you have a reservation?” in an empty restaurant.
– “Unless you have your booking reference, you will not be admitted to the event.”
– “The delivery day cannot be changed so if nobody is at the address it will be delivered the following day.”
– “I can only issue you with a uniform when the approval form is received from your department manager.”
– “To collect your train ticket, you must have the credit card you used to pay for it.”
– “Your query will be dealt with by the foreign exchange team. I am unable to transfer you and they do not make outgoing calls so please call this number…”
– “I do not know why you were able to make a reservation for those dates because our arrival date is always a Saturday.”

In all these examples, for whatever reason, the organization’s systems are not helping to achieve the best outcomes and, in some cases, present an active obstacle. Many organizations have issues like this and others: people are swamped by systems that require a lot of maintenance, and meta-work (work about work e.g., meetings, project planning, progress reviews) can take more time and effort than the work that needs to be done.

SERVICEBRAND GLOBAL

Using the SERVICEBRAND approach helps to maintain a focus on what is important (aligned brand identity, employee engagement and customer experience) and to keep in check the component parts within the Systems & Processes ‘Element’. In Simon Sinek’s words above, they do not replace the crusade.

Experience-led workplace design

August 24, 2022

Building customer experience (CX) can be a real challenge, it requires a great deal of data, understanding and the right application of insights about your customers’ desired outcomes. Not only this, but also how to create the kind of experience that leads customers to a better perception of your offering that they may not have had before.

“You have to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology” Steve Jobs

Experience-led design is not new, and most people will have experienced and benefitted from this approach using any Apple product, hence the Steve Jobs quote above. However, in commercial real estate, the ‘customer experience’ is often designed and delivered subsequently within the confines of the physical design.

There are clear and obvious disadvantages with this: imagine a new office with a beautifully designed reception desk but where there is a desire to reinforce personal service and a hosting style reception service with no barriers. The best results and least waste can only be achieved by designing the workplace customer experience first and then using this to inform the design of the built environment.

In practical terms, the first step is to create a strategic vision brief, articulating the purpose of the project, the values and brand concept and a high-level customer journey experience, covering all senses and the aspiration for how ‘customers’ will feel, what they will know and do. The built design and service delivery model can then flow from this starting point.

Well-being

Another dimension of customer experience in a workplace environment is the topic of well-being which has gained traction in the last 5 years or so – organizations are increasingly investing time and energy in this area. The well-being topic is wide ranging and covers a spectrum of topics from physical wellbeing (diet, hydration, exercise, sleep), an array of mental health issues, spiritual well-being (prayer facilities), employment factors (adequate pay and working hours), environmental factors (office design, ergonomics, biophilia, air quality, temperature, light and sound), social wellbeing (interaction and collaboration with colleagues), and even the benefit of an adrenalin rush.

Facilities management plays a key role because the function delivers so many of these wellbeing related services and facilities. The BCO’s 2018 research report, Wellness Matters, states that employee wellbeing is intricately linked to employee productivity and is boosted by spacious, naturally lit offices with good air quality and amenities.

Built environment

The scope of the physical design can also be extended to how different styles of workspaces can support different types of work (e.g. confidential calls, deep concentration, collaboration, creative thinking etc) and the importance of areas to take a break.

Some workspaces are designed deliberately to create specific traffic flows or impromptu ‘meetings’. I remember an office I visited in Johannesburg where the CEO had escalators installed as a central feature – wanting to avoid the silence he had witnessed between groups of employees when they used the elevators. There has been an increasing interest in biophilic office design: bringing the outdoors into the workplace and results in improved productivity, increased concentration levels, greater creativity, enhanced wellbeing, reduced absenteeism, increased productivity, and improved employee retention.

The cost versus investment perspective is well demonstrated by looking at the decision about whether to provide catering and/or kitchen space in an office. From a pure cost perspective, this is often a large area of expensive real estate, especially if the space is only fully used at lunch time. On the other hand, the space can be a highly effective vehicle for organizational communications, a potential area for collaboration and informal networking, a way to provide healthy food for employees and is convenient, avoiding any need for people to leave the building. As we are now learning, employees that have time to make and build friendships at work are far more productive than those that don’t.

We also know companies who do not have catering space because they have made a strategic decision to support the local business community. You can see that what might seem to be a simple decision at face value can involve a complex set of considerations and COVID-19 has added a whole new dimension with the office versus work from home (or elsewhere) dynamic.

Style

The final layer is the style of service delivery. The combination of the style of service, range of services and built environment are a strong message to employees and visitors about what is important to the organization, and we recommend to clients that the area of corporate real estate services is given sufficient focus and attention.

Research shows that workplaces that have been designed in tune with employee sentiment deliver a significant upswing in pride. There is a commonly held belief that people who experience a certain level of admiration derived from the efforts and achievements of their employer are more likely to become brand ambassadors for the company in question, and this can only go on to have a positive impact on a customer’s experience.

The new ‘workplace’

This area has taken on a whole new dimension now that the scope of ‘workplace’ has been extended by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. There are two fundamental developments:
1) For many office workers, the office is no longer the de facto place of work. The organization leaders in workplace need to consider how employees can be equipped to be as productive and fulfilled as possible, individually and collectively.
2) Because there is a viable, and often desirable alternative to the office, the organization leaders in workplace have a challenge to make the office a place that employees want to come to work … with experience-led workplace design.

SERVICEBRAND

At SERVICEBRAND Global, we believe in experience-led workplace design. Twenty years ago, I moved from the commercial hospitality sector (five-star hotels, conference centres and restaurants) and used this experience to implement experience-led workplace design with an award-winning One Team supply chain approach. If you are looking to improve the design and service delivery in your organization’s workplace to attract and retain talent and maximise productivity and fulfilment, let’s explore how SERVICEBRAND Global can help.
This blog is based on Chapter 19, Workplace from The Values Economy

What is SERVICEBRAND Global?

August 19, 2022

“Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.”
Arthur Ashe

This month marks the 17th anniversary of the creation of my company, SERVICEBRAND GLOBAL Ltd. The SERVICEBRAND journey started with a classic, corporate, defining moment or series of moments. By way of background and context, in 2002, a major global facilities management company were looking for a senior leader to develop the account for a Big Four bank and their UK office portfolio.

A key criterion for the appointment was a five-star hotel industry background. And since I had successfully turned around a five-star hotel and country club, uniquely delivering three consecutive all-green balanced scorecards and receiving recognition within the company and industry wide. I was excited to be offered the opportunity to transfer my skills across sectors from hotels to the workplace environment.

The assignment was an all-round success, founded on implementing a hotel style service delivery model for the collection of service partner companies involved and their combined total of 5,000 employees.

Commercially, the account grew from an £8m turnover catering contract to a £150m turnover multi-services contract. Industry recognition was received by way of a CoreNet Global Innovation Award and a service partner Customer Experience award from the bank.

Both the facilities management company and the bank were keen to explore a co-owned joint venture arrangement to scale the business proposition and take it to the open market, targeting major global contracts. The small management team were set to become shareholders and the business plan revenue numbers were in the billions of pounds.

Defining moments

First, there was a change of the facilities management company UK CEO. The incoming CEO, who had arrived from the international division of the organization sent a lengthy introduction open email to all employees explaining how he was going to create a successful future for the company. Within a week, he had left the business over an alleged historic scandal and the company chose to ‘batten down the hatches’ to focus on the core catering business. The embryonic new business concept was shut down before its first breath and my role was made redundant.

“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” Epictetus

The beginning

It was August 2005, and the above experience was the encouragement to set up, for want of a better term, a management consultancy business. The decision was based more on intuition than on a considered business plan and was informed by the following:

• a personal passion for customer service, the importance of front-line people and creation of admired brands.
• success in several senior leadership roles, both with large corporate organizations and smaller entrepreneurial companies.
• experience at Managing Director/General Manager level with a deep understanding of operational delivery and several specialist support functions, particularly Marketing and HR as well as Sales, Finance, Health & Safety, Property Management, Revenue Management, and others.
• a wide network of business connections.
• a realization that frustration with the way in which decisions were made in large corporate organizations kept being repeated.
• a desire to work with progressive service organizations who wanted to be leaders in their market or sector.

The business name came easily. It needed to indicate a focus on people delivering great customer service and the strength of an organization’s brand identity. It needed to have potential to scale internationally and, ideally, would be a name with a unique quality. SERVICE BRAND GLOBAL was born, and quickly became SERVICEBRAND GLOBAL, and the invented word ‘SERVICEBRAND’ was registered as a trademark.

Initially, it seemed like a good idea to offer support and advice to senior leaders of service sector organizations in a wide range of areas to improve their businesses, but it soon became clear that this ‘jack of all trades’ approach was not compelling when people were usually seeking a solution to a specific challenge or problem.

A three-month contract to lead a cultural transformation for the corporate real estate division of an investment bank for their London office provided some thinking space to develop a more coherent, packaged, or productised service offering, rather than basing the proposition on personal expertise, knowledge, and service.

The creative thinking process to develop and articulate the offer was a replay of the approach used in various leadership roles over the previous twenty years. Significant business impact and success had been achieved repeatedly so the task was to draw out the common threads of how this had been achieved.

Core themes

One strong core theme was a combination of theory and practice: understanding the theory which helped to underpin successful practical outcomes, applying theory in practice and, finally, understanding the relationship between the two.

Personal experience of working with various business models or frameworks (e.g., EFQM Excellence model, Hospitality Assured, IiP, and the Service Profit chain) had also been beneficial. The key insight was the value of having an overarching organization framework to support general management of the business instead of allowing an approach more reliant on individual functions and the organization structure.

These frameworks helped to join up the functions of business horizontally and vertically i.e., actively involving all members of the team and keeping them focussed on the priorities for the business as a whole. Other areas which had helped to create improved business performance were putting in place various common operating systems and processes including communication channels and employing methods to capture measurement and insight.

Evolution

The concept development process helped to identify that the first time the SERVICEBRAND approach had been used in its (almost) full form was at the City of London’s leading conference venue in 1996 (yet without knowing it) and then at a five-star hotel and country club. There was more conscious application with the facilities management company operating one of the Big Four bank’s UK offices portfolio.

In the seventeen years since the ‘beginning’, the SERVICEBRAND approach has been refined and developed alongside the use of a set of associated tools, some proprietary and others in collaboration with partners. Various projects have been delivered at different levels across industry sectors.

At one end of the scale, the framework has been applied in its entirety in large corporate organizations on a global or regional basis with a variety of workstreams over a two to three-year period. At the other end of the scale, much smaller, sometimes single location organizations have chosen to focus on one ‘Element’ of the SERVICEBRAND approach and perhaps even one specific tool e.g. 31Practices.

What all of the clients in these organizations have in common, is a progressive mindset and a recognition that a values-driven approach to a team of brand ambassadors delivering a memorable customer experience can be an immensely powerful way to achieve sustained performance. Both larger and smaller projects have received industry awards.

In 2018, the word SERVICEBRAND became trademarked in US and in EU.

It has been quite a journey so far, time flies when you are having fun. And there are still more adventures to be had with a retreat concept, a customer experience training program partnership and a global visual arts initiative all forming!

The Power of Affirmations

August 12, 2022

I figured that if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest.
Muhammad Ali

An affirmation is defined as a statement or proposition that is declared to be true. Self-affirmations were first popularized by French psychologist Emile Coué back in the 1920s, so they have been around for some time.

Proponents of the “law of attraction” often credit self-affirmations as being capable of magnetically drawing positive things such as financial success, love, and renewed health to us. But it is our belief that more than positive mental visualization is required to be happy and successful.

Of course, as highlighted in our book (co-author @Steve Payne) My 31 Practices, affirmations play a crucial role in directing our attention and awareness to the areas of our lives that we would like to improve. But the important part of our process, is a recognition of the actions that must accompany these thoughts to bring them into reality.

Here is an explanation of why the affirmation approach is effective by Manprit Kaur – it is great to see such clear focus on practice:

“Remember, by making affirmations, you are consciously programming your mind to think in a certain way, so that hopeful and happy thinking becomes a part of your being. Affirmations are a way to train the mind; and training happens when you practice, practice, practice! Training requires conscious effort, discipline, belief, and consistency. That is exactly how you need to practice your affirmations.”

What do they look like?

Affirmations are simply statements that are designed to create self-change in the person using them or to reinforce current wanted behaviour. They can operate at a number of levels (a simple reminder, inspiration, focusing attention) with the potential to develop and embed positive and sustained change. Over time it becomes natural.

Four Guidelines for Effective Affirmations

1. First person: begin your affirmations with “I”. This makes your statements personal to you, and easy for you to associate with and take responsibility for.

I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. I know I can.
Watty Piper The Little Engine That Could

2. Present tense: write your affirmations as if they are already happening. This means saying, “I offer thoughtful gestures to people” rather than “I will offer thoughtful gestures to people”. The present tense is far more compelling than the future tense where you can find reasons that this is not what happens right now. For a similar reason, avoid using the phrase “try to” – this creates an opportunity for you to find an excuse or reason not to do something and weakens your commitment.

Do. Or do not. There is no try.
Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back

3. Positive language: focus on what you want to do rather than what you do not want to do. For example, “I enjoy making healthy choices when eating” rather than “I no longer eat fast foods”.

4. Emotional, personal words: these positive emotions are powerful motivators. For a similar reason, use specific words or phrases that you use or relate to. For example, “I hang out with my pals to feel happy” rather than “I spend time with my friends,” which sounds impersonal and like a bit of a chore.

Words can inspire and words can destroy. Choose yours well
Robin Sharma

How do you use them?

We believe that the daily discipline of my31Practices is an important factor in building affirmations that work to creative positive change in your life. But what is more important than what we believe or think, is what works best for you. Different people have different preferences.

Affirmation without discipline is the beginning of delusion.
Jim Rohn

This is why you can set your affirmation reminder at a time to suit you. In line with the myPractices approach we suggest that you take some quiet time to focus on your affirmations for the day. You might like to write it down, repeat it out loud, leave notes or associated quotes around the house. Then at the end of the day before you sleep, spend some time considering your experiences during the day. Just take five minutes to try these things for one or two days and see what differences you notice.

So what? Do they work?

There is a range of opinion in recent research. On the one hand, some researchers suggest the benefits of using affirmations include:

– protection against the damaging effects of stress on problem-solving performance

– fostering better problem-solving

– helping deal with threats to our self-integrity

People can be affirmed by engaging in activities that remind them of “who they are” (and doing so reduces our need for defensive responses when faced with implications for self-integrity of threatening events).

There are other researchers who cite the lack of supporting scientific evidence and see possible advantages and disadvantages for different groups of people.

Another school of thought focuses on mindfulness and a commitment to an alignment of values and behaviour.

And?
So where do all of these seemingly contradictory points of view take us? Well, we believe it can all be distilled down into the following:

Affirmations by themselves may be of some value to some people, BUT, when used as part of a broader approach (alongside other techniques such as mindfulness, practice, recognition and reward, reinforcement, and others) can TOGETHER be a powerful approach to the way you think, behave, and feel. Perhaps we should invent a new word: Affirmactions.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
Epictetus

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