How change florished when fed by customer insight and supported with light-touch project management.
Change is the new constant and yet, according to Gartner* and others, over half of all change projects fail and only 34% are a clear success. And SMEs are certainly not immune to this. Whilst some may enjoy less complexity and lighter regulation many have poor systems and process control; manual workarounds abound and these organisations are often less able to invest to support change programmes.
However the stunning improvements in recommendation, satisfaction and retention of one of our SME Clients is a great example of successful customer centric transformation. What they have learnt about making change happen will have relevance for many other organisations.
Our Client has asked to remain anonymous however I can say that the organisation employs some 300 staff and has revenues of £200M plus. They operate in a B2B environment and manage a complex mix of activities spanning sales, customer management, IT services, repairs and product lifecycle management.
We started working with this Client 4 years ago when they identified that poor customer satisfaction were driving high levels of attrition and low recommendation. In a highly competitive market they felt there was an opportunity to increase margins and market share if they could improve their customer experience.
What we did
Our first actions were to conduct qualitative customer research, map the end-to-end customer journey and to conduct a CX maturity audit to identify the extent to which the organisation’s strategy, governance, capacity and culture were customer centric.
Through this initial phase we identified clear priorities for improvement that included:
- A core IT service (a hygiene factor) that was failing to meet customer expectations. Quotes like this one were not uncommon
If they keep the …. service as it is I’m looking elsewhere, I can’t run my business.
- And the way the organisation was managing customer relationships.
My business is successful because it’s 100% service focused. They expect to be successful when they are the opposite and that’s not sustainable in the current climate.
How they managed change in the past
Our maturity audit identified a history of poor change success. Change tended to be driven by senior leaders with little staff engagement in the design stage and no consistent performance management or systemisation of processes. This resulted in low compliance and manual work-arounds were quickly adopted.
Perhaps more importantly the business did not believe it had a problem with the way it managed change projects, it also felt project management approaches were cumbersome and overly complex.
Five ways CX project management was enhanced
We have consistently enjoyed the active sponsorship and support of a well established senior Director. So, despite the prevailing attitudes to change management, some important enhancements to way the CX (Customer Experience) change projects would be managed were agreed:
- Two full time members of staff from the Client have been seconded to manage the workstream
- The Client agreed to pay for an experienced member of our staff to support their people. His job is to mentor the inexperienced change team and to help instil core project management disciplines
- We were allowed to create cross functional working parties for each change initiative and members were given some relief from their day-to-day responsibilities
- Customer insight fed into all CX projects. In addition to our original journey mapping and customer research, additional budget was made available for us to conduct more detailed (service specific) research and data analysis
- We either tested or piloted all changes before they were rolled-out
The effect of these changes
Many within the organisation were frustrated by this more deliberate, and slower project process and so other, high profile projects continued to be run by specific departments using their traditional approach.
The differences in success of these two approaches is stark, and in a recent review of all projects staff fed back the importance of:
- Cross-functional involvement and consultation
- Insight, analysis and tracking
- The value of tests and pilots to further improve the new service design
- Keeping work fun
- Provision of specialist support to guide decision making and to maintain momentum
Clearly there is much that might be considered as standard change control that the organisation still does not do. Our approach is probably best described as ‘project management lite’.
For example we have done relatively little detailed processes mapping, we have not implemented codified workflows and there has been relatively little detailed alignment between change initiatives and individuals’ job descriptions, personal targets and performance management.
These further refinements would undoubtedly help however our approach was a helped galvanise the organic nature of the management culture. It:
- Ensured that the departments who had to implement the change felt they owned it
- The wider consultation and testing meant that most staff understood and felt comfortable with what was expected of them before the go live date
- Our strong evidence based meant there was a wide spread belief that we were doing the right things
The organisation has enjoyed stunning improvements in CX performance
Over a 4 year period, 8 change projects have been run under the CX banner.
Between 2019 and the most recent results in 2023 the overall customer recommendation score increased by over 10 percentage points (from the mid 70s to the mid 80s).
The first and largest of the CX change projects tackled the delivery of a key IT service. Satisfaction with this service has improved from 51% just before we started work in 2019, to 71% 4 years later.
These improvements have also been reflected in improved customer retention in the face of increased competitor activity.
Whilst other factors will be at play it is widely felt that the CX programme has been a major driver of this improvement
Speak to us about your CX challenges
Whilst much of the detail of this project remains Client confidential if you would be interested in speaking to us about the principles behind what we did and how these might be applied to your business please do reach out in the first instance to our Managing Director; [email protected]. We are always more than happy to offer advice and to freely share our experiences.
* https://www.gartner.com/en/human-resources/insights/organizational-change-management
