This meeting's theme was about transformation - what ingredients make for a successful change and which ones are the tell-tales for a nightmare. The case studies in this forum meeting discussed moving from hell to heaven, moving from lots of service to no service, perfect storms, offshoring, creating happy branches, total service transformation and driving online adoption.
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Case Study Synopses
Keynote - Why Manufacturing can make the World Flat but Customer Service can’t? - Dick Hunter
Dick Hunter spent many years at Dell creating their much vaunted “supply chain” where an order placed in the US could be built that day anywhere in the world and shipped within hours. Michael Dell then asked him to fix service which thrust him into a different world of call centres and tech support. Dick describedhow he transposed the disciplines of manufacturing to customer service.
Transforming “Dell Hell”- What Caused it and how Service got Fixed at Dell? - Dick Hunter
Dell’s amazing growth through the dot com era and beyond had delivered it an enviable reputation as a company to be copied and admired. However, over several years its service rating degraded to the point where Dell was ridiculed in newspapers, on blogs and even on chat shows: “Dell Hell” was born. Dick described how Dell got into this situation, what he thinks caused the problems and what he did to fix them. The case study helped us contemplate how close their organisation is to a similar “perfect storm”.
We Energies: Why a Major Utility Bothered to Embark on a Service Transformation - Bill Price
Wisconsin Energies (We) is a US based listed utility with over a million gas and electricity customers. The company sees the customer as a key focus of their strategy and have embraced the “no service is best service” philosophy. In this case study Bill Price described why We Energies embarked on a service transformation and exactly what they are doing to deliver a transformed set of service experiences now they are six months into their transformation program.
Transforming Outsourced and Offshored Sales and Service - Bill Price
Whilst at Amazon.com, Bill Price outsourced parts of service for the first time in the company’s history. Bill has helped a number of major companies turn around their outsourced relationships and told us what to look for and how to turn around any sales or service outsourced or off shored relationship.
The Best Ever Contact Reduction story: How US financial service company CheckFree cut contact 25% per annum for four years - Bill Price
US bill payments and on line transaction provider CheckFree had heard all about the Amazon.com, contact reduction story. However, they did even better. They cut repeat contacts from 15% to 1% and reduced their contact rates dramatically for four years enabling them to cut customer service staff while transactions increased 500% and their revenues grew 250%. At the same time they started to tap into the customer feedback they were receiving on contacts. Bill Price tols us what CheckFree did, how they brought about this major transformation and the lessons for those trying to achieve similar outcomes.
Responding to the “perfect storm(s)”: Putting the Customer at the Heart of the Claims Experience at Suncorp Insurance - Tracey McFarland
The claim interaction is well known in the Insurance industry as a “moment of truth.” In 2006 the fall out from Cyclone Larry put the claims processes at Suncorp under immense pressure and forced Suncorp to revisit how the process worked from top to bottom. In this case study Tracey MacFarland described the issues Suncorp faced and some of the radical ways in which service processes and responsibilities were changed across the business.
Transforming the network experience: How BankWest created “happy” branches – David Rose
BankWest management knew that they faced a challenge to create branches that customers would be happy to visit. They knew that, at a minimum, those branches would have to be different to the other banks, but they did not know how different they could make them before they began turning off the customer. BankWest took a journey into the future and balanced the “fear of the new” with the “change needed to overcome customer apathy to bank branches”.
Migrating Job Searching and Advertising Behaviour Online: - What the old world can learn from the new - Simon Rosenberg
SEEK Limited has been instrumental in transforming the job advertising market. SEEK attributes this success to an obsession with two sets of customers; advertisers and job seekers. SEEK has shown how to get these different customers to adopt the online medium and built a unique culture in which ‘the customer is king’. The case study showed how SEEK has grown its online business, made it profitable and fended off both old world and new world competitors.
Transforming the Operating Model of Contact Centres at BUPA Australia: - Natalie Hannemann
For many years BUPA Australia had grappled with the issue of how to deal with the complexity of calls. The intricacies of product and regulation led to long learning curves and high volumes of holds and many calls needing help and support. Last year it implemented a new operating model with new skills and handling processes within the centre without any new technology. The results have been huge gains in efficiency, reduced learning curves and increased flexibility. Natalie explained how they did it and the benefits delivered.
