News Splash, 4th 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. This is the last issue for 2007 so the editorial team here at Springboard CS will write to you again in 2008 and take this early opportunity to wish you all a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year.

The Mutual Experience
As we heard at the recent Building Society Association conference in Bournemouth, the Mutual Building Societies continue to consistently outscore the big banks for customer satisfaction and their customer’s likelihood to tell their friends about their superior experiences. This is great news but hardly surprising given all the bad press the big banks have been receiving over the last eighteen months. We believe the mutual societies in general are pre-occupied with their direct competition and missing key opportunities for competitive advantage. Mutuals are doing well and should have an inherent ‘customer experience’ advantage over their more financially driven competition. The way to build on this and make sure the mutual message is getting through is to focus on building and developing a uniquely different customer experience, so……………………. When looking at benchmarking your customer experiences shouldn’t you be looking wider than merely the big banks? You clearly cannot ignore what your competition is up to, but can stop being obsessed about it and focus instead on being ‘best in class’. If you want to be the best you need to both compare your self to the best and take a truly aspirational approach to the development of your customer experience. Only by doing this can you ensure you are continually moving forward ~ setting the agenda not following it. However, are we really seeing the “bigger picture” here? What does mutuality mean to the average person in the street?
	From our perspective, this issue boils down to five key questions for the mutual societies:- Question 1. What does it really mean to be mutual? Question 2. How does (1) translate into customer experiences and expectations that provide a point of differentiation within the market? Question 3. Where does our CxP offer us competitive advantage and create value for us? Question 4. How do we let our members and potential members know about the great Customer Experiences they can expect? Question 5. What do we need to do to deliver the experience effectively across our organisation on a consistent basis? If you want to find out the answer to the above questions either:- <Click Here> or contact@springboardcs.com

Equipping Your People to manage Distributor Relationships

Distributors are managed in many different ways within organisations; from stand alone commercial teams in some businesses right through to being managed along side or in the same way as traditional “transactional” customers. The key issue for brand owning companies is that within distributor based relationships there exists an element of value exchange but the “value” is less about transactions and more about shared objectives and the ability to offer an effective Customer Management service.

Your distributors should be extensions of your customer management. They should be filling customer management competency gaps that you do not currently posses or wish to develop within this market/customer (s).

It is recognised that managing a market/distributor relationship today (and this will become more complex going forward) requires many skills outside of the normal capability and competencies of a transactional account manager.

If you would like to see the complete programme then <click here>

Springboard Approach to Customer Experience Development The CxP map This Map takes organisations through the investigation, creation, implementation and delivery, phases of the ‘journey to customer experience success’. The CxP map, like all SCS maps is a guiding framework not a prescriptive methodology. The depth of analysis, time, effort and resources invested at each phase should also reflect the value and importance the organisation attaches to the activity. All organisations, teams and individuals have a customer experience process, even if it is implicit. The benefit of using a framework like the CxP map and its underlying tools is that it focuses effort on the areas that are of real importance for the organisation and does so in a consistent, collaborative and efficient fashion, e.g. If you are clear about the customer experience you want to deliver then phase 1 is a sense check, or if it’s the experience delivery that is nagging at the back of your mind, then its phase 3 that needs focus. Following our map ensures everyone knows where they are on the CxP journey. This process ensures that the organisation is joined up regarding its customer experience thinking. The end result is improved team working, decision making and more rapid access to improved results. Interested to know more about CxP? <click 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 examples are from:- The NHS a positive experience Download the story. SEAT Dealership memorable experience Download the story.

TAKING SOME OF THE MYSTERY OUT OF EXECUTIVE COACHING

Stuart McAdam puts executive coaching in context.

There is no doubt that executive coaching can make a significant contribution to the development of individuals, teams and organisations. However, it’s clear that many managers remain unclear on what it can do and how the process works. In particular there are concerns that it is a remedial activity which is done to you.

To download Stuart’s full article <click here>

Our “STaR” Academy – Sales Training and Results

Springboard are a key part of a new and unique team delivering a ground breaking sales training and development programme to one of the UK’s most successful FMCG companies.

In order to provide genuine Competitive Advantage in the world of the major UK grocers this company were looking for new materials and a level of tailoring not offered by the larger training providers – hence our team !

Intrigued? <click here>

Assessment Centre Data Can Inform Coaching It seems foolish to invest in a robust and costly assessment process only to ignore the developmental benefits of the information. Yet this is what many organisations do when it comes to feedback from assessment centres. Would you like to know more? <click here>

Pharmaceutical Partnering:- Creating Partnerships that add value and improve patient outcomes. The title sounds almost too good to be true, but working with Foundation Trusts, Primary Care Trusts and Pharmaceutical companies in partnership can make it a reality. Within this article we explore the context and highlight the how. <click here>

Helping Your People Create

Our featured Partner for this issue is……………………………

People Create specialise in blending creativity with Commercial Understanding. Mark Wright the Managing Director of People Create is a learning design consultant and facilitator. He actively seeks to work with a wide range of commercial, social and charitable organisations and helps individuals deliver more effective performance, better decisions and clearer solutions.

If you would like to know more then follow the link:- www.people-create.co.uk or contact@springboardcs.com

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