We believe employee engagement is an essential element of organizational success. That’s why embedded into our strategic planning process are tools to both encourage employee ownership as well as to measure employee engagement. It’s truly exciting when culture change takes shape and the transformation leads to a shift in employee attitudes. That’s exactly what we witnessed with a client in Florida.
The client hired us initially to lead a training program for improving front line customer service skills. We suspected there was probably more systemic issues going on than simply poor customer service, and our probing beneath the surface proved our hypothesis to be correct.
The first step in our engagement was to capture a baseline snapshot of customer perceptions with service. The data showed us where in the frontline the biggest gaps in customer service needed attention. We conducted customer service training to address the gap. Our training program involved interactive classroom discussion and role play, testing, and re-teaching where needed.
Follow-up customer surveys showed that 97% of customers felt that service quality had improved or stayed the same over the previous year. These were excellent results. And we knew we could do even more culturally for the organization if we could broaden the customer-focused lens from frontline staff to the entire organization – beginning with the administration. The client invited us to do just that. Working with the leadership team, we created an organizational performance scorecard that would provide a dashboard view of performance to the entire workforce, Board, and community.
The scorecard, comprised of weighted metrics reflecting service areas deemed most important to the customer, enabled all levels of the organization to see how their engagement tipped the scales of organizational success.
Building on the success of the Organizational Scorecard, we then worked with the client to construct performance scorecards for each department. Working closely with department heads and their teams, we identified metrics that aligned with the Organizational Performance Scorecard, ensuring that the entire organization would be contributing to common goals.
Scorecards were then used as a foundation for a redesigned Performance Evaluation process. Starting with the CEO’s evaluation, and later expanded to all employees, the new tool links an employee’s individual performance to the achievement of departmental and organizational goals.
With a broad lens on expectation and how effort contributes to organizational success, employees can see how their effort and engagement impacts the entire organization.
Since the introduction of this new way of doing business, customer satisfaction has increased another 15%. Strong results from an organization that has provided exceptional service to its customers and value to its community.
