Category Archives: OTM Service Strategy

Customer Service, Market Communication Gap, OTM Service Strategy, Service Excellence

What promises are on your corporate website?

Recently when working with people in the areas of management development and/or service excellence, I have been surprised by how many employees know very little about what is on their company website.
Upon discovering this issue I then ask the staff members if they have ever had situations where clients have referred to something that they had read or viewed on their website that the staff member didn’t know about.
Nearly everyone has said that they had experienced such a situation.

When I then ask who they believe is responsible for ensuring that they (the employees) know what is on the website, they reply, “Senior Management” or “The Marketing Department”.

Very few people say, “Me!”.

In reality it is a two way street. Senior managers and marketers should communicate with staff regarding what is being communicated via the corporate website. Staff should also take personal responsibility for knowing what is being communicated. In this way the Market – Communication Gap can be minimised or eliminated.

What is your experience of this issue?

Find out about the OTM Service Strategy to help you to close your market – Communication Gap.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Customer Relationship Management, Customer Service, Leadership, OTM Service Strategy, RACV, Service Excellence

RACV misses second chance, will there be a third?

In a recent post If you treat me like a number I’ll behave like a human I shared a story regarding the RACV being ‘happy’ for me, a long term customer, to ‘try out’ their competitors for $70. For many years I have spent thousands each year being insured through the RACV, for both personal and business purposes.

Having discovered the their competition’s ‘normal’ price was 25% better than the RACV’s ‘discounted price’ on vehicle insurance, and the RACV’s reluctance to see me as a human being with whom it has a long term relationship, I sought the assistance of an insurance broker to help me find a business insurance policy to replace one that was due to expire with the RACV. The one I have now purchased was just under 10% cheaper than the RACV policy.

My assumption is that RACV uses a sophisticated Customer Relationship Management System (CRMS). Such a system would have a significant amount of information about me including my entire history of insurances with the RACV.

As a result of recent events this system should include two critical pieces of information

1. I received a quote for a new vehicle insurance through my business that was not activated
2. One of my business insurance policies expired and was not renewed

I have been waiting (and wondering) if the RACV would contact me to discuss our business relationship. My assumption was that these two pieces of information would cause some sort of a ‘warning’ within their CRMS that something had gone wrong with our relationship.

Yesterday I received a courtesy call regarding the business insurance renewal. I explained that I had gone with another provider. To my surprise the RACV representative could not end the call quickly enough. There was no request to know why I had chosen to leave, just a polite “Thank you, good-bye”. Should I have been asked I would have been happy to politely share my story, to off the RACV the gift of my feedback.

I couldn’t help but think that the RACV is losing a long term customer and it either doesn’t know, can’t see the signs or simply doesn’t care.

As each of my insurances fall due I will continue to see what the market has to offer. Already I have saved multiple hundreds of dollars through moving two policies.

Prior to my recent experience the last time I had investigated what the ‘opposition’ had to offer (as far as my insurances are concerned) was in 1993. Since then I had been paying my renewal notices under the illusion that I was a valued customer of the RACV. I was the classic ‘loyal customer’.

The $70 improved rate that the RACV refused to provide me on the new car insurance has already cost it two policies worth several thousand dollars. Does that make any business sense at all? If the RACV had provided that $70 differential, which is clearly within its profit range because it does provide that extra 5% discount to people, then I would have continued to be a loyal customer and not researched what the opposition was offering. When I discovered the huge differential I could not help but wonder whether I had been lulled into a sense of getting a good deal through my loyalty, when in fact my discounts were being applied to uncompetitive rates. In a strange way the RACV has done me a favour through its poor service as I am now saving money by going to their competitors.

How is the RACV using its CRMS to help maintain strong relationships with its clients?
In the long term can they afford to treat loyal customers in similar ways that I have experienced?

I wonder if I will be contacted at any time to discuss our relationship?
Will the RACV do anything to try to recover this situation?

If you have a CRMS how do you use it? Does it help you to maintain healthy relationships with your customers? What would you do in this situation if you were the RACV?

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Customer Service, Leadership Development, OTM Service Strategy, Service Excellence, Southwest Airlines

Team members always reflect your brand in great service companies

The way team members behave, how they are attired and the way they speak should reflect a consistent brand message. Please don’t be mistaken. This does not mean that staff become robotic in their behaviour and appearance (unless that is a deliberate aspect of the brand strategy for the organisation).
Southwest Airlines are a terrific example of brand management. Their people, irrespective of role truly reflect the spirit of freedom in the way they perform their jobs. Southwest staff have fun on the job and the enjoyment positively infects their customers. In addition the way that the staff are treated by the organisation demonstrates that staff come first.
At Southwest pilots are renowned for helping ground crew load and unload baggage from their planes. Why? Fast turnaround times are key to Southwest’s service and profitability, and the pilots no it and support the practice of doing what needs to be done (safely and in a fun way when appropriate) to achieve great service.
The customer is not always right. Employees, not customers, come first… “The customer is sometimes wrong. We don’t carry those sorts of customers. We write to them and say, ‘Fly somebody else. Don’t abuse our people’” (Herb Kelleher, CEO Southwest Airlines, quoted in (Freiberg et al., 1996 p.268)

Why not use this article to catalyse Conversations That Matter® in your organisation. 

Contact Gary Ryan to discover how the OTM Service Strategy® can enhance your capacity to deliver service excellence. 

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Culture, Customer Service, Leaders, Leadership, OTM Service Strategy, Service Excellence

Recognise, Reward and Celebrate Great Service

All organisations need to be able to recognise how they are performing with regard to their Service Strategy.

They also need to have the capacity to recognise and reward their staff for their great service.

Celebrating milestones and achievements is a critical aspect of a service culture and sends positive messages to staff about the value that great service holds within the company.

Establishing programs that recognise and reward staff for great service are essential tools for re-enforcing what really matters in your organisation.

I have been fortunate enough to both lead and be part of teams who have been nationally recognised for their achievements in providing great service. To watch those team members shout with joy when their organisation’s name was called out has been a delight. Think about it – these people were shouting for joy as if they were at a football match and their team had just scored a goal. Well their work team had just scored a goal – a goal in providing great service!

The energy that the recognition created was tangible – you literally could ‘feel it’ and the benefit for staff engagement and continuing on the continuous improvement journey was well worth the effort to enter the awards competitions.

How do you recognise, reward and celebrate great service?

Whether you are big or small, you cannot give good customer service if your employees don’t feel good about coming to work. (Martin Oliver)

Please feel free to use this article as a catalyst for Conversations That Matter® inside your organisation.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Conversations That Matter, Customer Service, Leaders, Leadership, Leadership Development, OTM Service Strategy, Service Excellence

Why the development & recruitment of people lies at the heart of your service strategy

Existing staff need to be developed so that they have the capacity to implement your Service Strategy. This will result in them having the capacity to understand the expectations of their customers and being able to develop appropriate service standards from that understanding.

New staff need to be recruited through processes that identify their alignment with your Service Strategy. This means that the organisation’s recruitment processes must reflect a process that is seeking the best possible people that it can find so that its Service Strategy can be implemented.

The result is a virtuous cycle that re-enforces great service. When people love their work they attract other high quality to want to work with them too. The reverse is also true. The wrong people in the wrong jobs who end up hating what they do don’t provide great service. How could they!

How do your development and recuitment practices support the establishment of a virtuous cycle for great service in your organisation?

Why not use this article to stimulate Conversations That Matter® with your team.


©Copyright Gary Ryan 2011

Research Participant
Our recruitment policy used to be, “Do you know anyone who has a heartbeat and is available?”. Me, I’d been here 20 years and had never been on any training. I never realised how bad we were until I honestly thought about whether I’d like to be a customer of my own team. My answer was no!

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Customer Service, Employability, Leaders, Leadership, OTM Service Strategy, Professional Development, Service Excellence

How strategy and S&Ps support great service

All staff, whether the CEO or the lowest paid employee in the organisation have a high sense of job satisfaction when they are able to serve their customers properly. When systems & processes exist to support the passion of people, great service can flow through an organisation.

The staff satisfaction that comes from providing great service is an outcome of the support that an organisation’s strategy and systems & processes provide for the staff members when they are in the act of providing their service. In turn, this type of internal relationship results in a virtuous cycle that generates great service at the customer interface, whether internal or external to the organisation.

In this sense, it is absolutely vital that systems & processes support staff in building positive relationships with clients, customers and stakeholders. Without this support delivering great service and staff job satisfaction fall through the floor.

How well do your organisation’s systems & processes support staff to deliver great service?

Copyright Gary Ryan 2011

Relationship employees work harder and smarter. They care about the business, its future, its destiny. The business becomes their business. 
Leonard L Berry – researcher and author
Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Customer Service, Employability, Employability Skills, Leaders, Leadership, Leadership Development, OTM Service Strategy, Service Excellence

Service Standards exist so that we can create Great Service

Service standards are the in-house systems and processes, policies and procedures that your organisation has created to give it every possible chance of meeting and exceeding the expectations of its customers.

They create the possibility of consistency while allowing the people in your organisation to make decisions that lead to improved service outcomes. It is not always necessary to create new service standards; many of them already exist in operating manuals, rules, procedures and policies.

The challenge is to determine whether they support or hinder great service. The ‘bureaucracy busting’ of the GE Workout program (The Boundaryless Organisation by Ashkenas, Ulrich, Jick, & Kerr, 1995) is an example of a process that at its very heart was about ensuring the company’s systems and processes remained aligned to serving people and achieving the organisation’s goals.

Copyright Gary Ryan 2011

Research Participant
We think that it is great when a new person starts work here. We encourage them to ask questions. So they do. “Why does this policy and that policy exist?” That’s what they ask. And if we haven’t got a genuine answer, then we seriously look at the policy or procedure and change it if it is no longer helping us to serve our customers.
Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Employability, Leadership, OTM Service Strategy, Service Excellence

Great service connects staff to your organisation

Good service organisations connect their staff to the organisation in many ways.

Staff feel a regular and consistent level of achievement, job security and engagement with their organisation when service is alive and well. In this context, service lives from staff member to customer, staff member to staff member, manager to direct reports, direct reports to manager and so on.

Staff may even be connected to the organisation after they leave. This is also good business. Good service organisations understand that it is better to train staff and have them leave than to not train them and have them stay. Some jobs simply aren’t for life – and shouldn’t be! The nature of some jobs is that the staff performing the roles should develop and move on from the role.

If it is possible for them to move inside the organisation, then those opportunities will be provided. Often, the staff member needs to leave the organisation to continue to develop. This is okay.

Maintaining a connection with ex-staff can create a larger customer base, opportunities to move into new markets and a potential network of like-minded people who can sporn opportunities to and from each other. There is nothing wrong with being explicit about these hopes when good staff leave. Once again, it is simply good business.

How are your staff conencted to your organisation?

Copyright Gary Ryan 2011

“All internal efforts, programs and processes have to be geared towards maintaining or improving the external performance of the firm”
Christian Gronroos, Researcher and Author
Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Customer Service, Employability, Organisations That Matter, OTM Service Strategy, United Airlines, United Breaks Guitars

United Breaks Guitars – A classic ‘service gone wrong’ story

When a fellow passenger called out, “My God they’re throwing guitars out there!” Canadian singer/songwriter Dave Carroll was horrified when he realised the guitars were his.

With his guitar broken and horribly damaged Dave spent 12 months chasing United Airlines to pay for the damage they had caused. With nothing less than indifference, United Airlines did not offer a sincere apology nor did they fix his guitar and repay Dave for the cost of repairing his equipment.

So Dave and his band, Sons of Maxwell, did what they do best. They wrote a song (and then a second one) about their experience and released it on YouTube.

The song was an immediate YouTube ‘hit’ and you can see that there have been currently over 10.5 million ‘hits’ on the song.

Within a day of the release of the song United’s share price had dropped by 10%. The value of the drop in shareprice could have bought Dave 51,000 guitars.

The moral of this story is that we live in exponential times. Not every story will go ‘viral’ – but you just don’t know which ones will. If a company gets something wrong, which does happen from time to time, then the best thing to do is to fix it as fair and fast a way as possible.

The OTM Service Strategy® is a system that has been designed to enhance an organisations capacity to provide a consistent and continuously improving system for service excellence. Contact me if you would like to arrange a conversation regarding how the OTM Service Strategy® could benefit your organisation.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com