Is Your Organization Prepared for the Customer & Business Priorities of 2013-14?

With the start of a new calendar year just behind us, it’s a good time to reflect on the challenges facing us in 2013, and how well prepared we all are.

With the huge economic changes of recent years - and the rapid emergence of technologies like social media - is 2013 going to be a turning point for business performance and customer service?

Or, will we be so distracted by the ‘shiny and new’ syndrome of technology, that we fail to deliver on the basics of running an efficient operation that meets the needs of our customers? After all, you can put lipstick on the pig, but it’s still a pig.

What are organisations’ priorities for 2013?

I’ve started the year by studying two key analyst reports and launching a follow-up study to find out more about the issues they’ve indicated. The Call Center IQ Executive Priorities 2013 report makes for really interesting reading. The key highlight for me was the finding that broken business processes remain the number one pressing business issue.

Yes, it’s down from the 2012 survey results, but the prevalence of broken processes and frequent data input errors in the top slots again still indicates that many organisations are still not on top of the basics.

The fact that the following three issues of concern are missed sales opportunities, customer churn and low employee morale does not, therefore, come as a shocking revelation. If processes are broken and people are making mistakes (undoubtedly leading to service failure) then how can we expect things to be going well?

What have we been doing through the last decade or two of quality improvement, process re-engineering, lean six sigma and customer centricity initiatives that mean we’re still dropping the ball?

These findings go to the heart of customer service and business operations. Let’s face it, having the basics right is still essential for every other initiative that follows on behind it. Surely nobody consciously builds in inefficiency and waste any more, right?

In the Government sector, for example, shared services are still seen as a key to doing ‘more with less’ in an age of austerity. Yet, the lessons of the last few years from the UK Government sounds a clear warning – that sharing services without addressing the basics of process re-design doesn’t (unsurprisingly) deliver the promised land set out in so many business cases. This is an issue I talked about in more detail back in March 2012 .

Gartner Group’s 2013 CIO survey, reported here in New Zealand’s CIO magazine, tells us that business priorities remain increasing growth (1), delivering operational results (2) and reducing costs (3). Interestingly, innovation in products and services (6) comes above improving efficiency (7). The thirst for knowledge about customers is revealed by ‘Analytics and Business Intelligence’ taking the number one slot as 2013’s big technology priority.

Meanwhile, Call Center IQ reports nearly 64% of decision makers stating that increasing customer loyalty is their top priority. We know from academic research (Brady & Cronin, 2001) that a customer-oriented business generates increased loyalty from its customers. The same research identified the need for organisations to learn (so analytics is a good thing, if correctly applied!) as key to this success, so business may be on the right track here.

But before we get too enthusiastic, we also know that no amount of analytics technology will help if the business processes analysing data and generating business improvement are fundamentally broken. That takes us back to square one.

New survey launched to assess progress in key initiatives

Insightful as these reports are, what they haven’t yet focused on is precisely this question – what are the business areas of activity being carried out ‘on the ground’ and how much progress is being made?

That’s why I’ve launched a new survey to look at this next level down. It’s open to private and public sector organisations across the world and will help assess different priorities, progress and approaches being taken.

The survey is available at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/priorities2013

The questions focus on business prioritisation and readiness in six ‘hot topic’ areas:

· Business leadership

· Business process improvement

· Change management

· Customer experience

· Technology implementation

· People management

As with any survey, it’s only as good as the responses given, so that’s my appeal to you today.

For ten minutes of your time, you’ll help provide valuable insight into what businesses are doing in 2013-14 and whether or not we’re likely to meet the challenges that the Call Center IQ and Gartner studies say we’re facing.

I’ll be reporting back the findings in early April, so watch this space and please do encourage colleagues and networking contacts to take the survey as well.

References:

Digital technologies are the top priorities for 2013. CIO New Zealand, pp.1–2. http://cio.co.nz/cio.nsf/news/digital-technologies-are-the-top-priorities-for-2013

Price Perrott blog: The Customer Service Experience, March 2012, "Reforming New Zealand’s Public Services."
http://customer-service-experience.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/reforming-new-zealands-public-services.html

Brady, M. & Cronin, J.J., 2001. Customer orientation: Effects on customer service perceptions and outcome behaviors. Journal of Service Research, 3(3), p.241.

21^st February 2013

Dr J E Price
Managing Director, Price Perrott Limited.