Case Study: ICD015: Business Transformation Through Customer Focus
Drivers
- Intense competition around a few service providers
- Poor service record in an sector not known for good service
- Need to differentiate the company through superior service and value proposition
- Increased demand for efficiency and cost effectiveness
The area of employee benefits and HR consulting has undergone a period of consolidation in recent years resulting in the development of a few strong providers of products and services with little to distinguish them in terms of product provision. Unfortunately, no one provider has to this point been able to really steal a march and customers have reported that until now, service provision has been patchy by almost all but particularly poor by some companies. Our client has a vision of taking the position of market leader and therefore required to completely re-engineer the business to turn around a poor service record while developing a compelling, competitive and market leading value proposition for the market.
Inputs
- Specialist Consultancy Support to develop and initiate and implement a planned, cross divisional programme of change
- Facilitation of executive workshops and interviews
- Quantitative and qualitative research programme with service performance measurement
- Analysis and reporting of current customer relationships, perceived value and service performance against current segments
- Support to develop an ABC costing model
- Design and development of a new segmented value proposition
- Project management support
The ICD Partnership was engaged to help scope, initiate and support an ambitious programme of workstreams that would bring about this vision. Specialist customer management strategy consultants assisted with development of the programme and supported each workstream. The project was conducted on sound project management principles to ensure delivery on time and within the estimated budget and scope. A bespoke research programme was put into place and through analysis of existing customer data, support given to identify key segments within the customer base and the current service experience and treatment of customers. A new value proposition was developed and tested across segments to establish where customers’ currently perceive value is added and the results of this research were inputted to the re-design of a new set of propositions costed and applied to different value segments. At the same time, feedback was elicited from customers regarding current and future service expectations and this was matched against current performance. The results of this research were fed into a new system implementation, training and development programme for staff and also supported the performance management framework for account and service managers.
Deliverables
- Specialist Consultancy Support to develop and initiate and implement a planned, cross divisional programme of change
- Facilitation of executive workshops and interviews
- Quantitative and qualitative research programme with service performance measurement
- Analysis and reporting of current customer relationships, perceived value and service performance against current segments
- Support to develop an ABC costing model
- Design and development of a new segmented value proposition
- Project management support
An implementation plan was developed involving a mix of projects designed to produce not only quick tactical wins (e.g. interventions, new communications materials and target processes for redesign) but also strategic initiatives (segmentation and allotment of resources to key accounts) and proposition design, based on customers’ inputs.
As a result of the process of gathering feedback from customers, who participated in the research on the basis of improving working relationships, a number of customers spontaneously reported that they had both enjoyed the interviews and also benefited from it. As an exercise in building good relationships it was a successful programme.
Outputs
- Improved accountability and measurement of service performance levels
- Strategic alignment of channels and customer communications within an overall contact strategy
- Transparency and improvements in the allocation of resources according to value
- Strengthened internal relationships
- Strengthened customer relationships
An implementation plan was developed involving a mix of projects designed to produce not only quick tactical wins (e.g. interventions, new communications materials and target processes for redesign) but also strategic initiatives (segmentation and allotment of resources to key accounts) and proposition design, based on customers’ inputs.
As a result of the process of gathering feedback from customers, who participated in the research on the basis of improving working relationships, a number of customers spontaneously reported that they had both enjoyed the interviews and also benefited from it. As an exercise in building good relationships it was a successful programme.