A medium-size family enterprise with a leading position in their industrial sector is facing important issues in their approach to customers. The current board mainly composed by the second generation of sons and daugthers is following the traditional ‘only-product’ business management ways and methods established by the company’s founder. That view resulted in a strong success and company growth in the past, but the scenario (3 years before COVID times) the company is facing shows a continuous decline in sales results, mainly due to a bad service reputation and weak business relationships in an environment where uncertainty prevails in markets and customers.

CEO (the older son) feels it’s the time to lay the foundations for a new sustainable and evolutionary customer relationship approach with a more personalized treatment and much better service management processes in place. It’s necessary a new way of doing, thinking and feeling about the customer that would lead again (but more consistently in the future) to achieve the objectives in terms of sales, revenue and service excelllence.

The initiative was kicked off by the CEO, followed by the Board and middle management, with Sales Director and Customer Service Director mainly involved in its deployment.

An inquiry process started by running a survey exercise deployed to all employees (a deeper diagnostics exercise was defined to the Board and Managers) with the aim of addressing service issues under following 5 perspectives:

1. Leadership and Service Vision
2. Customer Service Experience
3. Employee Experience
4. Service Delivery
5. Information Systems

One of the key elements for driving changes was to improve the quality of the conversations from within and with all the customers and partners. Those conversations were conducted under a structured approach and cross-functional view, having all departments engaged in those, giving voice to all the areas that directly or indirectly are having impact on customer success.

Running several workshops on joint sessions between the Board, Middle Management and selected clients, with the purpose of prioritizing issues by using Jobs-to-be done framework and problem reframing methods

Finally, an actions plan was defined based on all the outcomes collected.

The inquiry process, structured conversations and workshops sessions uncovered numerous criteria and the important actions for improvement that have resulted in,

• Top Management has reinforced and consolidated its focus on customer success through a continuous communication and leading practices over the whole organization, making visible that service excellence is the key factor in creating greater value for both customers and the company.
• Key Account Management (KAM) functions have drastically improved by having now a more integrated view when negotiating agreements or dealing with customers’ issues. Business meetings with clients and groups of selected end customers have increased, from 2 visits/client/year to 4 visits/client/year.
• All employees (not only those on the front line) are involved in taking care of customers’ problems and also empowered to make decisions.
• More efficient service operations. Service costs have been reduced by 19% after 2 years.
• Delivery of quarterly training programs on customer service across the whole organization.
• Employee recognition and annual rewards programs to appreciate service quality experiences (with customers’ testimonials) and good service practices.
• More preventive actions to avoid service failures, resulting in an increase of the Net Promoter Score from 30 to 50 after 2 years.
• Plan for adopting technologies like CRM to provide higher quality service.

From the analysis of the structured conversations and workshops it was very clear that a sense of awareness and creativity sparked the exchange and share of ideas about how customers should be approached and service should be delivered. Dialogue and collaborative working in the organization is now much more fluid. It has encouraged people to find common ground and better decision-making process to move forward over all the actions above detailed.

• Service Innovation
• Team Leadership
• Collaborative Intelligence
• Customer Service Mgmt.
• Service Value Creation
• Key Account Management

• Purpose to Portfolio
• Organisational Agility & Effectiveness
• Process Effectiveness & Automation