I’m delighted to be working with Arun Bala, Nitin Lalan and the Invenio Business Solutions team on this great programme.
I’ll let you know later in the year what we are achieving together at Invenio. For now, here’s the official announcement of our partnership with Invenio!
Shane O’Regan
Project Coordinator, Deep-Insight
Invenio announces partnership with Deep-Insight
Cork, 24 January 2020
Deep-Insight is delighted to announce its partnership with Invenio Business Solutions. Invenio is a global leader in solving business challenges with IT solutions. This tailored programme will enable Invenio to better understand customer needs, address concerns, and implement measures to enhance relationships and the customer experience itself.
Invenio has doubled in size since 2017 and anticipates more growth in the coming years. Invenio’s leadership team recognises the business’s rapid growth, including the need to maintain core values while evolving the organisation’s culture as it matures.
Invenio’s new Customer Experience Programme will be insight-orientated and action-orientated. ‘Customer Focus’ will be at the forefront. The programme will facilitate interventions as soon as customer issues arise, and ultimately becoming key to the annual account planning process. This investment is integral to all future activities at Invenio and is a tangible commitment to integrate the customer voice across global business units.
Deep-Insight’s approach is multifaceted. It is based on the view that to achieve a truly customer-centric organisation requires a roadmap of careful planning and execution. The annual in-depth assessments will identify gaps and help build lasting customer relationships with personalised plans across each account.
At Invenio, listening to customers and strengthening relationships is imperative to delivering exceptional experiences. Ultimately, this will help Invenio achieve its core purpose of being the most trusted and valued partner in its customers’ success.
Partnership
Arun Bala, CEO at Invenio commented: “My focus has been and will continue to be on delivering success for Invenio’s customers while driving transparency and value delivery through all customer engagements. Partnering with Deep-Insight to enhance our customers’ experiences is a fantastic investment for us. I look forward to driving this initiative with the team there.”
John O’Connor, CEO at Deep-Insight: “We’re delighted to come on board and support Invenio on its Customer Experience journey. We’re looking forward to employing the skills, tools and Customer Relationship Quality methodology to help Invenio employees operate a world-class Customer Experience Programme.”
KPN is a leading telecommunications and IT provider and market leader here in the Netherlands. As well as supporting several million consumers, KPN also supports corporate customers in the areas of infrastructure, workplace management, the cloud, security, data networks and data centres.
Our CEO John O’Connor recently caught up with René Versluis, who has been responsible for running the Net Promoter Score (NPS) programme at KPN’s corporate division for several years. René is a genuine expert in running a customer feedback programme in a large corporate business to business (B2B) environment.
I hope you enjoy this short interview with René Versluis.
Pim Braat
Deep-Insight Regional Manager, Benelux
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René Versluis and NPS
John: René can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your involvement with Net Promotor Scores (NPS)?
René: Sure, John. I have worked with KPN for more than 15 years and I have had a series of commercial and sales roles during that time. In recent years, I have been a programme director for some of KPN’s strategic projects including responsibility for setting up and running its Net Promoter Score (NPS) programme for corporate clients. The trigger for KPN creating that role and asking me to take ownership was the fact that KPN values its corporate clients and is interested in their feedback in the fast developing world.
The Importance of Good Governance and Follow-Up
John: What were the first things you did when you took on this new role?
René: Leadership is important so my very first step was to create an NPS board which included many of the senior leaders in the company. We met initially every single week. This was an important step in setting the right governance for the programme.
John: Would you say that the NPS programme was successful?
René: Yes, I would say we had a lot of success with the NPS programme. We got feedback from customers but more important, we took action. If a client score needed to be improved, we implemented a Client Improvement Plan. We also insisted on closed loop feedback with each client. That means that within four weeks of a survey taking place, the account director created this Client Improvement Plan and discussed, agreed and shared that plan with the client.
Lessons Learned
John: What lessons did you learn from running the programme? Or to put the question a different way, what advice would you give to yourself if you were to start all over again?
René: I don’t think I would have changed anything fundamentally. I have mentioned the importance of leadership. The other thing that is important is setting realistic targets. You can’t change the culture of an organisation if you set targets that are not achievable.
John: How did the NPS Board change the culture in the organisation to make it more customer-centric?
René: One of the techniques that we used when people came to us with a proposition was to ask them: “What is the effect of that on the NPS score?” If you keep asking that question, eventually people recognise that any proposal or any investment needs to be made with the customer in mind. If it’s not and people can’t articulate a clear benefit for the customer, then it’s a wasted investment. I would also say that you need to work very closely with key clients – you can’t assume that you have the right answer. You must make sure the client thinks it’s the right answer.
The Future
John: You’ve recently left KPN after more than 15 years. What do you plan to do now?
René: I’m not ready to retire just yet! I think I have learned enough from my time at KPN to help other companies thinking about embarking on their customer experience of NPS programmes. Net Promoter is a great tool but it needs to be applied correctly in B2B environments.
John: The very best of luck, René, and thanks again for sharing those insights with us.
It’s a story about Leadership, first and foremost. But it’s also a story about Strategy, Execution and Culture – the key themes in a new book about how B2B leaders build customer-centric organisations.
Shay Walsh is the Managing Director of BT Ireland and was our guest speaker at a recent breakfast seminar at the Irish Management Institute. His topic was ‘Customer at the Heart’ and Shay told the story of how BT transformed itself into one of Ireland’s leading customer-centric companies. It wasn’t an overnight transformation but BT was lucky enough to have a series of MDs, all of whom shared the passion for putting the customer at the heart.
LEADERSHIP
BT’s Irish operations are purely business-to-business (B2B) unlike its British Telecom parent which sells to both consumers and businesses.
Back in 2008, BT Ireland knew that it had poor or deteriorating relationships with some corporate and government customers but didn’t have an accurate assessment of the quality of these relationships. Chris Clark is the first leader in Shay’s story. He was the MD who first engaged Deep-Insight to find out.
The initial customer feedback was poor. Very poor. BT was in the ‘Danger Zone’ but Chris Clark now had a baseline from which to start rebuilding the business.
Shay Walsh was part of Chris’ leadership team and ran the Irish wholesale business. Chris and Shay had no easy fixes – there was no silver bullet. Just a lot of poor processes, unhappy customers and a leadership team determined to get to the bottom of the issues and do the right thing for their customers.
FROM BAD TO GOOD
Chris, Shay and the rest of the BT leadership team all believed passionately that the journey to financial success had to be built around a clear focus on the customer. They set about fixing what was broken and repairing the damaged client relationships. When Chris got promoted within BT, Graham Sutherland took over as MD. Progress was slow at first but Shay and other members of Graham’s leadership team finally got to grips with the underlying problems. One by one, they fixed them. They called the overall transformation programme ‘Customer First’. By 2011, BT had not only exited the ‘Danger Zone’ but had managed to get into the ‘Performing Zone’.
BUILDING AN EXECUTION CAPABILITY
Colm O’Neill accelerated BT’s ‘Customer First’ programme when he became MD of BT Ireland in 2011. He appointed a Customer Experience director called Mairead McSweeney who drove the programme with ruthless precision. Mairead initially assessed how customers felt about BT every six months before moving to an annual cycle. She put governance rules in place to ensure that the right individuals in the right clients were contacted. She made sure that the ‘Customer First’ programme could not be ‘gamed’.
Shay Walsh was now MD of Business Sales and he and the entire organisation (not just the sales team) were incentivised on the quality of the relationships they had with BT Ireland. Sales teams had targets set either at an individual level or at a team level. The senior leadership team had an overall BT Ireland target to hit for Customer Relationship Quality (CRQ) before incentives were paid out.
FROM GOOD TO GREAT
Shay, Colm and Mairead now embarked on the second half of the BT customer journey – going from Good to Great. A different set of skills and capabilities was required because you can’t fix your way to greatness. Now it was down to the sales and service teams, working together, to identify where they could bring added value to clients. Then they made sure that the BT organisation could deliver on those promised value-adding improvements. In 2014, BT reached the ‘Unique Zone” – essentially the top 10% of Deep-Insight’s database.
THE ENEMY: COMPLACENCY
When you’re on top, the only way is down. The enemy is complacency. What was refreshing about Shay’s talk was his honesty about the fact that not everything is perfect in BT. They still get things wrong some of the time. The majority of customers may be extremely happy but Shay and his team are not resting on their laurels.
Shay Walsh became MD of BT Ireland in 2015. Since then, he has been pushing an agenda of continuous improvement in the company. There is no room for complacency in Shay’s organisation as the pressure in the telecommunications industry for better, cheaper services is relentless.
WAS IT WORTH IT?
Absolutely, says Shay Walsh. BT Ireland is still in the ‘Unique Zone’ but more importantly, the company is in a profitable and extremely stable position. Shay’s final slide sums up the BT Ireland story and the benefits of putting the customer at the heart:
Long-lasting relationships with clients
Increasing revenues from those relationships
80% of next year’s target revenues already contracted
Extremely happy customers – 57% are Ambassador clients for Shay and his team
PODCAST
This is a summary of the BT Ireland story. To hear Shay Walsh tell the story in full, listen to the full podcast on the Irish Management Institute website.
If you want to find out more about the BT Ireland story or how to put the customer at the heart of your company, contact us today or click on the link below to read about how business leaders in BT and several other organisations have transformed their companies to become truly customer-centric:
GUEST BLOG FROM PETER WHITELAW, AUSTRALIAN BUSINESS CONSULTANT AND CO-AUTHOR OF “Customer at the Heart”
What is the secret ingredient for creating a customer-centric organisation?
Since John O’Connor and I embarked upon writing the book Customer at the Heart more than a year ago, I have had the opportunity to meet many people interested in customer centricity. I have also delivered several presentations to small and large business groups on the topic. I probably shouldn’t be surprised, but people often asked me the above question. It indicates that people are curious and keen to embark upon the journey towards customer centricity.
My simple answer: Passionate Leadership is the secret ingredient.
All of the senior executives we interviewed for Customer at the Heart demonstrate this trait. We selected them for this reason – to share their passion. However, over many years of assisting organisations to change and become more customer-centric, I have encountered a spectrum of leaders. I’ll tell a couple of stories, but first I need to explain why Passionate Leadership for customers is so important.
The first premise is that leaders are ultimately accountable for the performance of the organisations. The second is that without happy customers, the organisation won’t exist for very long. The logic is simple. Leaders and their organisations don’t survive unless their customers are happy.
Business Barriers
Unfortunately, a lot of ‘stuff’ can get in the way of that simple equation. Organisations are continuously evolving and changing as the environment changes. This constant movement creates uncertainty and to counter this we develop rules, policies procedures, role descriptions and other bureaucratic tools to maintain control. Much of this inhibits creativity, innovation and sensitivity to the needs of customers.
Culture
Then there’s ‘culture’, commonly described as ‘the way we do things around here’. Much of the current culture is derived from the history of the organisation. The people on board the longest see it as a safe haven and permeate it through to newer members of the team. You can really see the entrenched cultures when you merge two organisations. The problem with entrenched culture is that it’s intransigent. We know people resist change because it’s scary – even when it’s bleeding obvious that we have to change to succeed.
Passionate Leadership
Passionate leaders know all this. They’ve usually been there before and they see that their real role is to make change happen. That means challenging the status quo and being prepared to break a few things and rebuild them. They start with the equation ‘happy customers = business performance’ and begin to influence their people into putting customers’ needs into every decision. Alongside that, they challenge their people to question why they do the things they do, unless they ultimately assist the customer. Passionate leaders are risk takers.
How to make it happen?
How do leaders do it? They talk constantly about customers and to customers. They visit customers and they ask and they listen. They seek regular information on the quality of customer relationships.
Next, they act on what they learn. They know they can’t change culture overnight, but they can put in train a series of initiatives – all intended to respond to customers’ needs.
By taking this stance and embarking on the journey towards customer centricity, they begin to influence their people. Some will enthusiastically join in, some will remain passive and some will be obstinate resisters. Gradually the culture will shift – even if it means shedding some of the resisters.
Passionate leaders reinforce the momentum by celebrating successes. Their people become collaborators and contributors to change and they grow into their new identities.
Case Studies
Last year I met with a passionate leader who has been working assiduously with his leadership team and his people on a 5-year transformation to not only adapt the business to a world of disruptive competition, but also to change the internal culture. He’s been doing this ‘brick-by-brick’ so that the company is now clearly differentiated from competitors because of its superior customer service and depth of relationships.
A couple of years ago I endeavoured to assist an organisation in a very competitive industry where profit margins are thin. Their CEO gave lip service to customer centricity to the extent of branding the business as ‘customer-focused’ while doing little else. The corporate priority was to automate as much of the front-line services as possible, and to shed staff. When I interviewed some of its key customers it was obvious that there was a growing problem. One comment I recall was: “next they’ll be offshoring their customer service”. That CEO has since moved on.
I recently met with a relatively new leadership team who are commencing their customer centricity journey. They have many challenges ahead – a legacy of broken promises, little in-depth insight into their customers, staff who are keen but nervous about the future. However, the new CEO will succeed because he has boundless enthusiasm for customer centricity and he has a leadership team who share his vision and the passion. Their first step is to reach out to customers and listen.
The Secret Ingredient
Passionate Leadership is the secret ingredient to building a customer-centric organisation. It’s not the only ingredient. Customer centricity also requires innovation, commitment, time and persistence. It’s also obvious that it will not succeed unless that secret ingredient – ‘passionate leadership’ – is fully activated.
Peter Whitelaw is an Australian consultant providing customer relationship assessments, customer centricity guidance and change management services. Peter has a background in engineering, sales and general management with Hewlett Packard, Tektronix and Optus Communications. For 11 years he was CEO of project and change management training and consulting company Rational Management, training thousands of managers across the world. In recent years he has been lead consultant on several change management and customer centricity projects for both commercial and government organisations.
We have some new faces in Deep-Insight. They bring an exciting mix of talents and interests and are already adding value to the company and what we can do for our customers.
Here in Deep-Insight, we take our time with recruitment. We understand that getting the right fit for our company and for the roles is so much more important than filling a position quickly. This approach has paid off more than we hoped for and we are delighted and privileged to have these individuals join our team.
Fabienne Falvay – Project Coordinator
Fabienne is originally from the Netherlands but has been studying and working abroad for the past number of years. After spending time in New Zealand and Denmark she moved to Ireland in 2016. She has been working at Deep-Insight since March 2019 as one of our Project Coordinators.
Fabienne comes from an analytical background and has a passion for working with people and large sets of data. In her spare time, she likes to cook and work on design projects with her sewing machine.
Meghan Clune – Project Coordinator
Meghan Clune originates from Cork, enjoys travelling and exploring new and different cultures. Meghan has completed a BA in Business Studies in Cork Institute of Technology and has worked for companies in varying different industries with a background in fraud analytics, crisis management and onboarding.
Meghan gets excited about innovative thinking and creative problem solving, she has previously managed strategic projects that focus on improving employee engagement within organisations.
Shane O’Regan – Project Coordinator
Shane O’Regan is a project management professional who is driven to understand, enable and enhance the human aspect of organisational transformation. Shane hails from Cork, Ireland and has lived in Chicago and Seattle while working in radio and completing a BA in Communication and an MA in Digital Anthropology.
Shane is interested in design, urbanism, psychology, digital ethics and the relationship between people and technology.
Craig Johnson – CRQ Advisor
Craig Johnson was born in New Zealand and has been living in Ireland for the last five years with his Irish wife and two children.
Craig’s professional background is in key client relationship management, having worked in the financial and outsourcing sectors internationally for the last fifteen years.
