Hi,

I have been asked to put some ideas down on the following subject.

"How to transform an organisationally focused team into a customer and sales focussed team without losing sight of service levels"

I have a few ideas already

-Ownership of Top customers (currently all customers are dealt with by all members of the team)
- Incentives - to increase sales run an up-selling project with the person generating the most additional sales receiving - ? something (whatever the team feels would be best for them)

I could really use some help on this topic and appreciate all responses.

Thanks
Leanne

Honestly, any response would be appreciated!

Leanne,

Sorry I've not responded earlier. Actually, this one baffles me. An 'organizationally focused' team? And it becoming focused on sales and customer service, without losing sight of service levels? Bizarre. (What type of service is adminstered by the service levels? Do they translate from 'organizationaly focused' to 'customer focused'?)

In my opinion, the requirements would be training (and potentially lots of it) and desire and motivation by the team members to switch their jobs to meet the (new) organizational needs.

Best of luck to you,
KSB

Hi! Leanne,

As far as my view is concern no organization goal can be set without keeping customer focus in mind ( in Service Industry). So there is no question of transformation. You just need to switch over the responsibilities among the team members.
In my point of view if your organization is already having good service levels than automatically your sales are going to rise. In other words you should stick to basics without doing anything that might result in lowering the lavel of your service.
Warm Regards,
Naresh Joshi

Thank you both for your response - I am glad to see that it is not just me that thinks they go hand in hand.

Hoping I got this right... you want to rev up the team up by having them stop just worring about company P&P (organizationally focused) and put a greater amount of their energy into servicing the customer (customer and sales focus) without moving away to far from established company metrics (service levels)?..

If this is right.. I have to say "To change something, you have to change something".. i got that from Amyway if you can believe it..

Anyway, I just read something from Tom Asacker that has made me rethink a few approaches for my team..
"..it really doesn't matter how customers feel about you and your business. What makes a differance is how your products (and service) make them feel about themselves and their decisions...". "...Far too many companies are focused on the product and not the experiance. We (C/S professionals) need to replace our brain with our heart because that's often how people make descisions. Studies have proven that the essential differance between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action and reason leads to conclusions. What do you want? Do you want action or do you want people to think?".." The question to ask is, "How am I making customers feel?" Am I making them compare or care? There's a big differance. Caring and feelings drive action.. the other stuff is just a tool. The bottom line is that the really hard stuff is soft stuff.. it's the feelings of your employees and customers...that, in the end, is your competitive advantage."

I really like this... we have to generate relationships with customers, and to do that we have to personalize our customer service/experiences, to do that we need to allow the staff to be personal..and to do that we need to create and environment within the workplace that inspires them to work for the betterment of all concerned..that means engaged, focused, trained and empowered staff that know the parameters they can work within on behalf of the customer and company.

Anyway just some thoughts...