Beyond Metrics: Unmasking the Customer-Centric Revolution in Service Excellence

Introduction

In the intricate web of service organisations, where metrics often play the role of storytellers, it’s easy to be misled by the numbers. Behind the façade of seemingly stellar performance, I discovered a profound truth leading a team serving pension customers. This isn’t just a story about KPIs and dashboards; it’s a journey into the heart of our operating model, where what seemed like a well-oiled machine was on the verge of collapse. Join me as we unveil the hidden layers of service excellence, the pitfalls of task-oriented measures, and the transformative power of putting the customer back at the centre of the narrative.

Measuring performance is crucial when it comes to understanding if you’re delivering great service to customers. But there are organisations out there who might not be quite as good as they believe they are…or as good as their metrics tell them. 

My Story

I used to lead a large team delivering service to pension customers, covering a range of customer needs from the basics of changing their personal details through to understanding their retirement options and everything in between. Customers accessed us through all the usual channels (letter, email, phone-call and on-line), in some cases we had on-line self-service capability. We measured our performance using standard key performance indicators (KPIs); % calls answered, volumes of demand, % of demands actioned within a defined SLA etc. Management dashboards were created and reviewed in management meetings and decisions made about our capacity planning, scheduling, training needs etc. etc.

As was often the way with large organisations, the annual planning cycle brought challenges over finding efficiencies and reducing costs, but this was a business that had done that over a number of years and it was felt that there wasn’t much left to go at. Employee engagement wasn’t great, staff retention was beginning to bite and taking more cost out felt like a bridge too far and it would actually result in lost business, poor customer outcomes and the road to ‘shrinking to greatness’.

We needed to take a different approach.

Hold Up The Mirror

Whilst our KPIs told us we were doing okay when it came to service, when you spoke to the frontline colleagues they didn’t believe we were as good as we could be. When probed, they’d complain that they didn’t always feel like there were able to help the customer as much as they wanted to, or felt able to, with the knowledge they had…the system got in their way…as a leader in the business that was a tough message to hear.

To really understand what was happening, we undertook an in-depth study of the journey our customers went on when they made contact with us. What we found was that our service as inadequate and what appeared to be a well oiled machine was in-fact on the verge of breaking, not because it wasn’t adequately resourced, but because it was being strangled by a restrictive system and a focus on the wrong metrics.

The operating model wasn’t fit for purpose and our KPIs didn’t illuminate the real service our customers received. The operating model had emerged over time, in the main as a result of annual cost-cutting; slicing 5% to 10% off annual budgets and sweating the people asset through the introduction of functionalisation - teams that specialised on certain tasks in the belief that they would do more if they only had one thing to focus on. In the case of the contact centre, their role had been diluted down to answering the phone, providing information to customers but where changes needed to be made, these were captured as tasks and managed by back-office administration workers through a task management system….the same system that the fed the KPI dashboards.

What the model and the KPIs failed to recognise was the customer…we cared about tasks, the timeframe between request and completion, but not necessarily quality or experience…in fact I’d say we were blind to those with the exception of our net promoter scores, but they were based on a fraction of the customers who interacted with us everyday. How many customer satisfaction surveys do you complete, when asked?

So what did the study show us?

The Truth Hurts

The truth. And it was hard to watch and listen to at times…we’d let customers down when they needed our help, not because our people didn’t try or have the knowledge, but because we didn’t have an operating model that resulted in consistently good service.

The key realisation was that customers don’t come to service organisations with one request at a time, especially when dealing with financial products. They come with life events and want to know what that means for the product they hold. In some cases that’s very simple and when it was, we were very good….for example a customer moving home and updating their address. But most enquiries related to more complex needs…I’m changing job, I’m thinking about retiring, I’m getting divorced, I’ve been told I’m not well enough to work or in some cases, I’ve been diagnosed with a terminal illness. These requests trigger multiple events in the world of pensions and we broke those events down into tasks and gave them to different teams to complete and measured how well we did with each one…separately. We lost the customer context along the way, and in some cases we lost the plot!

For example, take a customer going through divorce…they wanted to change their address as they’d moved out of the marital home, they wanted to change their premiums as money was going to be tight and they wanted to know what their pension was worth as it was part of a financial settlement agreement. Each of those requests was dealt with by different teams, at different times and confirmations were sent when complete…no sequencing, no customer engagement, no control; but all delivered inline with the SLAs, so our customer was green on the KPI dashboards.

The reality went something like this. The customer’s premiums were amended and a valuation calculated and details were sent to customer. The address was changed and confirmation sent to new and old addresses (DPA control complete ✅). The customer then called in to to ask what was happening with the premium change and valuation….the call centre agent told them they’d been done and were in the post and would be received soon….the customer then called again chasing them up….the second call handler realised they’d been sent to the old address…and the customer then realised that their ex-partner would probably have noticed letters arriving from a pension provider, which would raise inevitable questions - not a great customer experience. This didn’t happen often, but it shows what can happen when service organisations don’t pay attention to the right measures and don’t set themselves up to deliver a great experience.

Key Learnings

Functionalisation and the management thinking that goes alongside it that if workers have less things to focus on, fewer systems to navigate then they will do a better job is flawed. It might work on a production line, but it doesn’t work when dealing with customers who bring variety in demand. I’m not saying don’t have specialist functions, they are absolutely needed, but the aim has to be to fulfil 90% of the demands that come into your organisation at the first-point - during the first conversation, the first email, letter or on-line chat. Design your operating model to deliver consistently excellent performance by paying attention to the right metrics…and those metrics have to be customer and experience related, not task orientated.

Think about measuring end-to-end times, failure rate, number of touches a demand requires before being complete. It’s also important to focus on predictability - use capability charts to plot performance and aim to remove the variation in your results - customers don’t mind waiting longer (a few days) if it’s going to be right. Once you’re delivering predictable results, then the challenge moves on to pace…and the combination of the two is transformational.

If you’re worried that all of this is going to bring additional costs, then it won’t. That study revealed how much waste was in our operating model; duplication, errors, multiple interactions when it could have been done one-stop. Yes we had to invest in new systems and ways of working, but the results were phenomenal…lower costs, better customer satisfaction scores, more engaged employees and a business that won new business tenders because it stood out from the crowd.

Summary

In the quest for efficiency, service organisations often find themselves entangled in the web of metrics, losing sight of the true customer experience. My journey leading a team serving pension customers revealed the perils of a task-focused operating model and the transformative impact of reorienting towards the customer’s journey.

Call to Action

As you navigate the landscape of your own service organisation, consider this: metrics should illuminate customer experience, not just task completion. Embrace a holistic approach, measuring end-to-end times, failure rates, and touch-points. Strive for predictability and pace, transforming your model to not just meet but exceed customer expectations. The result? Lower costs, heightened customer satisfaction, and a standout position in the competitive arena. The time for this transformation is now—embrace it, and unlock the potential of your business.