News Splash, 2nd Quarter 2007

Welcome to News Splash, the newsletter of Springboard Commercial Solutions. Our aim is to provide you with a quarterly update covering new developments in customer management and at Springboard CS.

Why do over TWO THIRDS of Partnerships fail?
The forging of Business Partnerships is a growing trend and one which is forecast to continue to grow exponentially in coming years. Partnerships are both complex, costly and extremely time consuming for businesses to set up and run and it is therefore shocking to observe that almost two thirds them either fail completely (with the partnership being formally dissolved) or fail to achieve their objectives. Springboard research has shown that this failure happens due to shortcomings in three distinct stages of partnership evolution :
	· Partnership Inception · Partnership Creation · Partnership Implementation

Failure can happen at any stage and there is a causal link between failure at one stage and subsequent failure in a later one.

For more information about the setting up and running of successful partnerships click on the link here to view our full article.

Winning through the Mutual Building Societies Retail Branch Customer Experience For many financial services sector customers the first face to face / human contact experience they have with your organisation may be in your retail branch on the high street. It is critical for the potential customer that having made the commitment to enter a branch the Customer Experience expectations that you have generated through your marketing activities are matched with the reality of the branch experience. All too often a sale is lost due to the reality falling way short of the customer’s expectation. Imagine an advertising campaign that shouts about close personal service from well trained experts in a professional and private office environment. Unfortunately, the in branch reality transpires to be a junior sales clerk facing an enormous queue on a Saturday morning and being unable to offer anything but rudimentary advice !! We have all had these experiences. Having developed the expectations with your customers, are they a reality when it comes to the crunch? If you would like the full article then click on the link here

Play the Customer Experience Accumulator Positive and negative customer experiences accumulate little by little until they feel huge. We’d like our readers to help us gather some anecdotal evidence by entering the Customer Experience Accumulator challenge. Send us your customer experience stories and we’ll pick out the best one to feature in the next edition. If ‘Good’, what was memorable and what will you tell your friends? If ‘Bad’ where did the gap between your expectation and experience occur and what was your response? The winner will also receive:- a bottle of Taittinger Champagne Send us your experience to enter This quarter our customer experience example is from the UK National Health Service, and is titled “The Patient Experience:- “Bouncing around the NHS like a pinball”. Download the story

Springboard New Thinking

“Delivering Customer Management Improvement from Day One”

“Two Streams”

Many Customer Management (CM) projects fail entirely or experience an initial dip in performance due to the project suffering as it goes through the classic change cycle :

We call it the “It will get worse before it gets better” syndrome.

In this paper we explore an approach aimed at pro-actively managing the change cycle and potential performance dip from happening, thus avoiding potential project failure . <Click here for the full article>

Springboard in the Financial Press And if you’ve missed us in the press, catch up on your reading by following these links to our features: Your Mortgage:- click here FT Adviser:- click here Mortgage Solutions:- click here

SCS gain ILM endorsement through innovative approach to training and development? An innovative approach to training and development has earned SCS the endorsement of the Institute of Leadership and Management. Developed in-conjunction with a key SCS client, the approach uses a unique blended learning solution to address the effective embedding of a Strategic Account Planning Process. Click here to receive more information about this innovative approach.

In Praise of Design Excellence

Design is all around us and forms a key part of our daily lives. One of our key partners is a leading design agency and their work is probably indirectly touching you everyday.

In this article John Graham, the creative lead at AD Creative talks about an innovative approach to retail design and the vital importance of the retail experience. <click here to read the full article>

John & his team help organisations stand out through innovative design. Find out more about AD Creative @ www.adcreative.co.uk

You are receiving News Splash from Springboard Commercial Solutions because you are a Springboard customer or business associate that has expressed interest in being kept up to date with new thinking from Springboard Commercial Solutions. News Splash will be sent no more frequently than once a quarter. To no longer receive our newsletters, click to unsubscribe.