Servicebrand Global Ltd

LOOKING TO VALUES FOR STRENGTH VERSUS COVID-19

How our personal values can support us at this challenging time

I have spoken to several people, now working from home, who are feeling “lost” to varying degrees at this time, searching for structure, direction and purpose. This is a good time to reboot: clear away everything that is unnecessary and focus on what is important to us. One way to do this is to identify your values, translate these into practical behaviours and then consciously practice them every day. This is the framework for the my31Practices approach: Identify, Action, Impact, Refine. The approach draws on a variety of sources such as psychology, neuroscience, mindfulness, NLP, action learning, habit formation and others and the book, MY 31 PRACTICES, release the power of your values for authentic happiness, co-authored with Steve Payne and illustrated by John Montgomery was published in 2016.

“This book helps you think through and deal with the problems and pressures we all face (in the workplace and our personal lives) to find personal solutions and a greater sense of wellbeing.” Professor Sir Cary Cooper, CBE, President of the CIPD

There is a simple four step approach:

Identify what is important to you (myValues)
Translate these into a set of behaviours (myPractices)
Practice your myPractices every day (myExperiences)
Reflect on your myExperiences at the end of the day

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HOW TO COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY DURING TIMES OF CHANGE

Effective communication during times of rapid change is different in style to communication in a steady state or “business as usual” environment. If you are a team leader, here are some tips that you might find useful to practice at this time:

Make Communication Regular and Frequent
It is imperative to set the expectation that there will be regular communication that is credible and comprehensive. Often there is a tendency for people to wait to send any type of communication until all the information is known and available. This is a mistake! It’s much more important to cycle your communication and repeat the same message often than to wait until all the information is complete and perfect. What if you don’t know something? Tell them! You can always say, “We don’t have all the information yet, but this is what we do know.”

Values and Purpose as a “guiding star”
The organization’s values are the way things work around here and the purpose is why the company exists. If you have these articulated and they are alive, keep reminding people of them and that if they make decisions based on the organization’s purpose and values they will be better decisions.

Do Not Over-Rely on Email
Many people receive lots of emails every day. So, why then, does anyone think an email is going to have enough of an impact to change someone’s behaviour? You can be pretty sure that no one will change what they are currently doing solely because an email has gone out saying they should.

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How to Formulate a Successful Customer Experience Strategy

For many customers, the service, support, and buying experience shape their opinion of a brand. It determines whether they will remain loyal customers or avoid the product in the future. For better service, many are willing to pay a premium and stay dedicated to a brand even if it is not the cheapest on the market.

The 2020 Digital Marketing Trends Report by Adobe and Econsultancy determined that Customer Experience is the most exciting opportunity named by organizations for the upcoming year.

But how do you formulate a successful customer experience strategy?

Get a clear vision

The first step in your strategy should be a clear customer-focused vision. Create a set of statements that can act as guiding principles and determine appropriate company values. Every member of your team should be aware of these values and know what behaviours promote them. Create a clear vision and share it with your team so it can drive everyone’s actions.

Understand your Audience

Next, double your efforts to understand who your customers are. Knowing the different types of customers who deal with your support teams can help you build the customer experience with their interests in mind.

Segment your customers and create personas that exemplify their different needs, requirements and personalities. By creating personas with names and stories, you can also easily communicate the idea of a customer type to your team and help them become truly customer-centric.

Create an Emotional Connection

The best customer experience is achieved when your team connects with a customer on an emotional level. Customer loyalty occurs when consumers feel emotionally attached to your brand, and they remember a specific feeling when they engage with the product or service. Businesses optimized for an emotional connection outperform their competitors by as much as 85% in sales growth.

Capture Customer Feedback

One of the most critical steps towards improving your customer experience is to listen to your audience. You need to receive real-time feedback so you can act on it fast. Capture feedback by using live chat tools and sending a follow-up email when the chat is completed. You can also make outbound calls to customers to get more insightful feedback.

Delegate customer feedback to specific customer support agents. This will show which team members make the most significant difference to your business. From there, you then can capitalize on their essential habits.

Treat Customer Experience as an Opportunity for Growth

In 2020, realize how valuable customer experience could be to growing and optimizing your business for better sales and more meaningful connections. The Servicebrand approach understands what matters to service excellence and helps authentic service organizations deliver a brand-aligned customer experience. Get in touch to learn about our strategies.

Creating a Culture of Service Excellence

Many customers choose to support one brand over another because they feel more of a personal connection with their values and because they’ve received excellent customer service. In order to stay ahead in the new paradigm of the value economy, companies should focus on delivering brand-aligned customer experience.

The way to do so is to focus on creating a service excellence culture for your brand.

Building a Culture of Service Excellence

There’s no shortage of companies that jump to mind when we think of service excellence. For instance, Apple, Disney, Amazon and more, have consistently focused on delivering better service and more value to their customers.

But what goes into building service excellence?

Each brand should recruit, promote and motivate each of their employees to step up their service quality. When a brand’s values align with excellent service, and their employees follow habits to ensure they consistently fulfil them, customers walk away with a better experience.

There is nothing accidental about the way service excellence is designed and achieved. Leaders should define what service will be like for their customer, by using the required language, knowledge and behaviours to put a plan together. This means understanding what customers need throughout their engagement with the brand and finding pain points that could be improved upon.

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How to Improve the Customer Experience in a Values-driven Economy

The customer experience has never been as fundamental to business success as it is today. As well as consumers expecting more from the companies and brands they engage with as part of a values-driven economy, innovations in the world of CX have created an increasingly competitive landscape where a poor customer experience approach could put you out of the game for good.

To address your concerns over what you should and shouldn’t be doing to offer great customer experiences that support your growth, we’ve outlined five key steps you can take. While they’re not the total answer, they can help you create a solid foundation for delivering consistent customer experiences.

Why is Organisational Alignment so Important?

The various parts of any organisation need to be “joined up”to achieve the best results. We worked with a company where the marketing department used the phrase “inspired performance” and yet in sales training they used the phrase “service excellence”. When we asked why they had not used “inspired service” as an alternative, the answer was “This is Sales, it is different to Marketing”. Good organisational alignment makes it easier to realise synergies and eliminate dupliocation and waste. We refer to this as horizontal alignment.

It is also essential for the organisation’s strategy and culture to be aligned from the boardroom to the frontline. Within an increasingly values-driven economy, it is important that your organisation is grounded by the same principles and core values that define who you are within your market. To support your brand and differentiate yourself from competitors, everyone representing the organisation needs to be a brand ambassador, all singing from the same hymn sheet. We refer to this as vertical alignment.

Bottom line vs long-term success

Many businesses fail to execute organisational alignment because of the associated costs and the fear that this process won’t really have an effect on future profits. However, in our experience, this couldn’t be further from the truth. When a business takes the time to ensure the appropriateness and effectiveness of core business processes and strategies, business performance increases (along with net profits).

It’s important to remember that an aligned organisation that synchronises work, structure, metrics, people, rewards, culture, and leadership is infinitely more robust and prepared for market challenges than one that isn’t. If you’re still in doubt, here are some of the major benefits of a fully aligned organisation.

Faster decision making

Performance is always hampered by indecision. As well as causing delays, you could miss out on crucial opportunities to capture new markets or expand your reach. Organisational alignment helps your team to be prepared and ready to make and implement any time-sensitive decisions without multiple meetings or review processes.

Improved employee engagement levels

Companies function so much better when everyone is aware of overarching goals and values. With a core direction or purpose, it is easier for individuals to feel “connected”.And when employees are more connected, they understand how their individual work links to the company’s overall strategy and feel more satisfied and fulfilled in their roles.

Greater brand consistency and integrity

An aligned organisation is much better at projecting a consistent brand image to customers (current and potential). When the company values and strategy flows through everything that it does, whether it’s through marketing and sales activities or the way it treats employees or through customer service, this communicates authenticity and helps to establish a sense of trust with stakeholder groups. Also, it helps the customers and external stakeholders to be clear about what you represent.

Increased leadership potential

Alignment improves the credibility of leaders as well as the power of their messages. Employees at all levels of the organisation feel more confident in their roles and discretionary effort increases.

How to Operationalize Strategic Plans in Your Business

In our experience, it’s all too common for businesses to design amazing strategies and plans that will lead to growth and success, only for these plans to fall by the wayside – never to be completed. Each business types can have its own issues in executing strategic plans, but the consequence is almost always unrealised growth potential and frustration among your team.

Whether you’re a start-up embarking on your first strategic implementation or a large enterprise who wants to roll out big changes across all your departments, we explore four key areas that will help you to implement strategic plans effectively in your business.

Improve Employee Engagement the Right Way

Rethink your approach to autonomy

Some businesses are reluctant to offer autonomy to their employees because they believe it increases the risk of poor performance or mistakes. Instead, they opt for more rigid managerial structures or micromanagement.

This is counter productive because autonomy plays a crucial role in job satisfaction and can seriously improve employee engagement levels. Within the right structure, autonomy gives individuals the chance to define their own direction and goals, motivating them to perform better.

Offer the right incentives

Incentives should be more than just the promise of a raise or bonus. While these things are key drivers of motivation for many people, their often long-term nature means they can be forgotten in the short term .

To incentivise people, consider adapting the way you reward your employees with a focus on recognition and more short-term, project-based rewards, or incentives that address personal aspirations, such as professional skills training or certification.

Treat everyone equally

There’s nothing quite like an unfair company culture to discourage employees from caring about their jobs. Whether it’s unfair pay distribution or the way sensitive personal issues are handled, providing everyone with a fair and equal environment will go a long way in fostering employee engagement.

By removing the possible concern of ill treatment or unequal benefits, which can be a huge distraction for productivity, you’re letting your team focus on the things that matter.

Commit to a values-driven culture

Finally, you can tie together all of these things within a values-driven work culture to improve employee engagement and drive motivation and inspiration across your workforce.

If you’re able to choose genuine and authentic values that connect with your employees, while backing this up with strong values-driven leadership, you’ll be able to build much greater two-way empathy, alignment and trust across your whole organisation.

How to Commit to a Values-Driven Business

Clarity

It all starts with identifying what your genuine values are and finding a clear and practical way to describe them. This description needs to work for employees across your whole organisation, not just a select few.

It is also important to make expectations clear about what these values mean for your company and follow up with regular communications to reinforce your values over time, both formally and informally.

Practice

You will need to commit to putting your values into action in a real and practical way. Whether its prioritising values in important decision-making processes or in your internal policies, you should actively integrate your values into the day-to-day operations of your business.

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IMPROVE ORGANISATIONAL ALIGNMENT WITH BETTER EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

While many businesses have wrongly assumed that more control, monitoring, and management is the only way to achieve organisational alignment, the truth is very different.

When employees are given the right framework and environment to grow and feel rewarded by their work, they will be a powerful force in moving your business in the right direction and improving integration across your company.

Redefine autonomy

Autonomy is often seen as something that only senior employees have the privilege of enjoying. Otherwise, it is only perceived as suitable for people in positions that require minimal teamwork and collaboration.

Read More… Organisational alignment