Transitioning the company's culture from a product orientation, to a service orientation.

Brief

Client: Australian life insurance company

Size: 650 employees.

Challenge: Transitioning the company's culture from a product orientation, to a service orientation.

Aim of Program: Achieve a competitive edge in homogeneous product marketplace.

Time Frame: Two Years

Deliverables

1. A training module to make employees "change ready."
2. A training module to provide employees with both a service mindset, and the skills to deliver superior service.
3. The development and implementation of a service strategy, to support the cultural change.

1. Change Program

Application based workshops were conducted by the training provider, supported by one on one and small group coaching.

Topic: change and service concepts and skills.

All employees were engaged by professional corporate skills and behaviour coaches, in rigorous practice of concepts and skills, until they became second nature.

In the Change module, all employees learnt the nature and patterns of change and the choices they could make to positively engage and model change. Team leaders and managers learnt to drive and effectively manage change, modelling it for those in their team. Senior executives learnt to initiate and effectively champion change.

2. Service

The Service module provided participants with the concepts of service, internal and external collaboration and value adding.

The post module coaching enabled them to learn to effectively apply the 3-5 service skills, from a suite of 50 skills, that would be most valuable to them in improving their own service performance.

3. Service Strategy

The Service Strategy focused on:

i) The alignment of systems and HR processes to support and reinforce the provision of internal and external service.

ii) The establishment of service standards against best practice service.

iii) The facilitation of Service Agreements between business units and individuals, in a single service chain, leading to the paying customer.

Outcomes

Pre and post initiative measures showed:

1. A shift in the ratio of change compliers to modellers from 90/10 to 60/40 i.e. post the initiative a significantly greater percentage of employees were prepared to actively engage and model change (rather than simply comply).

2. A lift of 25% in service skilling, as evaluated by internal and external customers.

3. A lift in customer evaluated service within 12 months, from the second quartile to the top quartile in the industry service survey.

All employees were engaged by professional corporate skills and behaviour coaches, in rigorous practice of concepts and skills, until they became second nature.