Client Success Story
Helping a Global Telecommunications Company to be No. 1 for customer service
The Background
Our client is a leading global telecommunications company with annual revenue of over £4 billion. Their 3,500 people provide IT communication network solutions to 800 of the UK’s leading communication providers who then repackage the product to sell to their customers. Ofcom regulations are in place to ensure the business operates fairly, impartially and openly.
The Challenge
Becoming number one for customer service is the single most important part of our client’s strategy. As the biggest and most established communications provider in the UK, its market position provides an advantage over its competitors, who are often also its customers.
A series of undertakings came into effect in September 2005. These are designed to ensure that our client does not favour itself in certain markets where it will always have a dominant position. The undertakings articulate our client’s commitments to deliver its services in ways which ‘put the customer first and respect the rules’. As a legally binding agreement signed with Ofcom, our client must demonstrate equality of access through key performance indicators and other forms of reporting.
Introducing and embedding the undertakings has involved significant changes to the way people do their jobs and while our client’s employees completed computer-based training, it became clear that many were still not sure how the undertakings related to their daily work.
The risk of a breach or a number of breaches occurring needed to be reduced because of the potential for reputational damage, the inordinate amount of time consumed by breach investigations and the likelihood of legal action and fines, including the possible reduction of regulatory freedoms.
The Programme Director of the Undertakings Programme decided to secure external support, in order to help our client to implement the much needed behavioural change programme. Due to its reputation for Treating Customers Fairly, Huntswood was called upon to provide this support.
The Solution
Scenario-based training seminars were previously used to educate people about the undertakings and the relevance to their daily work. However, they were considered to be ‘dry’ and failed to align the commercial and regulatory insights needed to influence behaviour in the right direction.
We worked closely with our client’s people to develop more holistic, creative and engaging ways to convey key messages, ensuring higher levels of sustainability within the business units.
Our joint objectives were to:
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Arm team members and line managers with the necessary knowledge and confidence so that they deliver an excellent customer experience, while adhering to the undertakings and avoiding breaches
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Help them to understand how to deal with situations effectively and recognise what constitutes inappropriate action
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Avoid a ‘stalemate’ position where no action is taken, leaving customers unsure on the issues they want to be addressed or resolved.
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At first, we helped to develop and pilot a small number of scenarios, while working with line representatives and subject matter experts. Bringing to life the reality of daily dilemmas also required clear linkages between the regulatory, commercial and behavioural implications of the undertakings. Putting the customer at the heart of the equality of access issue was a key success factor.
This first experience helped us to understand that the undertakings would be better supported if we equipped the business to address current and future regulatory issues by developing its in-house capability.
This involved two key interventions:
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Up-skilling an in-house design team who would support the business units in the design and delivery of individually tailored scenario-based training. They were provided with a design process, which helped them to define and create individually tailored scenarios, as effectively and efficiently as possible. They were also guided through ‘live’ design practice with subject matter experts, including the key steps to achieving legal sign off prior to local deployment
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Designing and delivering a ‘Train the Trainer’ event, enabling an internal team to roll out scenario training to a consistently high standard, ensuring effective facilitation and clear deployment of the key messages. Using a Presenter’s Guide designed by Huntswood, they practised ‘live’ facilitation of the sessions as part of their preparation for local delivery.
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The Result
As a result of adherence to the undertakings, Ofcom has already eased regulation in a number of markets. It is understood that as our client continues to deliver on its promises, it can expect to see further deregulation.
Our contribution to this programme has led to the set up of an in-house capability, both in terms of design and deployment, which enables them to embed the undertakings over time. The part it plays in helping people to make the link back to the very real expectations, demands and dilemmas they face has been demonstrated in measurement and reporting.
Feedback from delegates indicates that they understand that customer service and compliance are not mutually exclusive, they have to achieve both. There is also greater awareness that if they feel that compliance is harming customer services, they need to check that they or others are not creating rules where there are none. Last but not least, this programme’s success continues to support avoidance of breach investigations and actual breaches.
When asked to describe our contribution to the successful delivery of this project our client stated that:
“I am running a major behavioural change programme in the company designed to help people understand what they need to do in their day jobs to comply with the undertakings while at the same time delivering a great customer experience. We decided the best way to approach this was to run team based training using scenarios that illustrated the sorts of issues each team faces. Huntswood provided invaluable help in three ways:
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Training the team on how to define and write scenarios
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Creating a training pack for use by local trainers, which contains all the material needed to run a training session, including guidance on how to run the session
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Running a pilot 'Train the Trainer' session.
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Their input has helped us provide the right level of support for the trainers. We have developed eight scenarios using the framework created by Huntswood, and the feedback from the early sessions has been extremely positive” Senior Manager, Global Telecommunications Company.
Huntswood’s View
Employees and their line managers must have a clear understanding of how regulatory requirements relate to the daily challenges, pressures and dilemmas they face, in order to be appropriately compliant and commercial.
Ultimately, interventions which adopt a mechanistic, tick box approach will fail to help people to make the connections and in many respects the investment will be wasted.
Huntswood’s bespoke development of interventions of this kind ensures that the ‘treatment’ given to the subject area is perceived as relevant, whilst also being creative and engaging. By tackling that rich mix of regulatory, commercial and behavioural elements together, rather than separately, we are able to develop a more sustainable learning approach.
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