How can we help you?
To answer this question, we need to start at the beginning. For any intervention to be effective over time, the strategies, processes and skill sets need to be aligned with your customers’ expectations. Therefore, in the first instance, some sort of needs analysis has to be performed.
Strategy
We can guide your management team through Relationship Process Mapping, which is a way for organisations to define the best process for connecting with its customers over the course of the relationship. This involves analysing the key activities performed by marketing, sales, customer care and support people in developing their customer relationships, matching these activities against customer expectations and then identifying best practices and areas for improvement.
Having identified best practices and areas for improvement at the strategic level, the notion of Relationship Process Mapping should then be cascaded throughout the organisation, so that the resulting
Road Map can be examined at the tactical level. Once this Road Map has been defined and, perhaps, refined then the resulting areas for improvement can be put under the microscope. Perhaps some of the organisation’s processes are misaligned, perhaps there are gaps in peoples understanding, knowledge, behaviours or skills. Whatever the resulting areas for improvement are, we can probably help with guidance, coaching, mentoring or training.
Typical areas for improvement might include:
Process
The processes within your organisation are yours and yours alone. We can guide you through the mapping exercises to enable you to discover “best practice”, and based upon the resulting Road Map, offer recommendations in terms of process re-design, however, the final decision on what to change, when to change it and how to change it is yours. Our involvement is purely to help you understand what processes, if any need to be changed, in order to become more aligned with your customers’ expectations.
Behaviours
In terms of behavioural issues, it may make sense to have a greater understanding of your peoples’ work related behaviours in order to either redesign the make-up your teams, or to help your people modify their behaviours to help the organisation deliver on your customer’s expectations. We can help in this respect with the application of “behaviour type indicator” or “psychometric” instruments.
Knowledge
Your people’s ability to explore, understand and meet your customer’s needs depends on their knowledge of the wider context within which the customer and his/her organisation is operating.
Looking at the wider spectrum of your customer’s Business Issues will help structure and guide your people’s exploration of your customer’s needs. In particular, it can help them to:
- establish credibility and trust with the customer
- understand the language and terms in which the customer sees their challenges
- deliver a solution that considers the full range of different organisational needs
- identify potential opportunities at other levels, and with longer-term perspective
We can create a learning forum, for the acquisition of knowledge of your customer’s Business Issues, by helping your people examine the
External Issues, the Organisational Issues and the Functional Issues and then guiding them to determine the ideal language to use and relevant topics to discuss with the customer.
Skills
Finally, after considering the Road Map, you may have identified some skills as areas for improvement. We offer a wide range of skills training solutions covering the broadest spectrum of interpersonal communications.
More specifically these areas include:
- Customer Care
- Face-to-face or telephone
- Generic
- Body language
- Interpersonal communications
- Listening
- Presenting
- Time management
- Management
- Coaching
- Developing individuals
- Interviewing and recruitment
- Problem analysis
- Sales
- Account development
- Negotiating
- Opportunity management
- Prospecting
- Selling
- Telephone prospecting
- Tele-selling
So, as you can see, we can help at the strategic level, we can offer guidance on process redesign and we can help with specific behaviour and skill deficits with training courses designed to help your people match the best practices identified in your own organisation’s Road Map. To find out more specifically how we can help you and your organisation, please contact us.