Background: How important is customer service in an organisation?
What do you need to do to keep your customer service team focussed?
Why is excellence in customer service the key to the success of an organisation?

HIIL Services set a strategic objective of becoming ‘World Class’ in strategy, customer process, people and management, finance management and performance measurement. A key part of this strategy was to implement an advanced ‘Customer Services’ development programme for 115 advisors and team leaders within HIIL.

The customer service advisors were technically very competent in their knowledge; however with morale low and staff unclear on objectives it seemed there was a detachment from the customer and the ability to truly understand their needs and perspective. For some, there became a lack of belief in the product and the organisation which had started to instil a blame culture.  Some advisors were struggling with difficult calls and were frustrated when calls were going to managers and simple decisions were being made above their heads.  All these issues led to the breeding of negative behaviour in and around the different teams.  There was a need to give the responsibility and ownership back to the advisor.

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Solution/Process: Q. Learning developed a two stage programme to achieve this ‘World Class’ service delivery. The first stage was a two-day Developing Excellence in Customer Service programme for all the customer advisers. The objectives of the programme was to ensure that the team had a common language, a better understanding in how they can empathize with the customer and given the tools to enhance their personal service delivery.

Customer advisors benefited from the following;
* Understanding their development needs in order to deliver ‘World Class’ service.
* Clarity about their purpose and what’s important to them in their role.
* Understanding the customer’s needs and responding to them in an empathetic way.
* A variety of skills and techniques to give them some choices for how to provide a quality service to customers with different needs.
* A greater awareness of the importance of looking at quality issues on a scale beyond their immediate area of the business.
* Ability to deal with customer complaints, requests and questions with ease.
* Understanding the role that they play and the importance of what they do and how they can make a difference.

The second stage…To ensure that the team continued to step up into World Class Service and stay there we recommended that focus groups were set up to look at key issues. This is important in encouraging and enthusing people to get involved, take responsibility and own ongoing projects. We also recommended that to sustain the energy after the training programme further follow-up coaching is essential. To achieve this we ran a series of one-day Coaching skills modules for all the HIIL Customer Service Team Leaders who are now coaching the Customer Advisors team on a regular basis.

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Outcome: HIIL Customer Service now have a team of people who take ownership and responsibility for their own actions, with a ‘CAN DO’ attitude; who believe in the products and the vision of the organisation; who are confident in dealing with difficult customers and who can truly understand the customer’s perspective.

“You've made a huge step change for us here in HIIL – it’s rare to have made such an impact on so many in such a short period of time. We definitely need to actively build on it! Thank you.”

Paul Clark, Sales and Services Director

'Q.Learning's 'Delivering A World Class Customer Experience' programme provided colleagues at Halifax Insurance Ireland Ltd. with knowledge and skills around new ways of delivering customer service that have proven to be effective. The programme which linked with our business strategy, met the specific needs of the organisation at the time and was received extremely positively by those who attended. In particular, the programme improved individual self-awareness around communication, and encouraged ownership for behaviour during customer interactions. The key success factor was then to encourage each individual to take responsibility for changing their behaviours and actions around the customer, choosing a new approach where appropriate. The subsequent impact was felt not only in interactions with the external customer, but also on internal relationships - everything from improved teamwork to the creation of a 'Change Action Team' from the Customer Service area who set about taking ownership for improving standards for everyone in the organisation.

The programme has subsequently grown to include other areas of the business, for example through the 'Delivering World Class Communication' workshop in the Direct Sales Department. Nine months after it was first delivered, people are still talking very positively about the Q. Learning programme'.

Paula Collins, Training and Development Manager

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