The Stanton Marris Blog

• The real value of customer service

  We’ve all heard and experienced a lot of claptrap about customer service. Which company doesn’t put their customer first? Or rather which company really does? Of course there is good theory (e.g. ‘the Customer value chain’ showing that higher customer service leads to higher profits₁)

  I’ve been working recently with two companies which really do go that extra mile and see customer service as major competitive advantage. They’re both in very different markets – one high end luxury consumer brand, the other a commodity supplier, essentially business-to-business. Both are in ‘challenger’ market positions, with some much bigger and more powerful brands ahead of them.

  For the luxury brand, personal service is at the heart of their brand promise. For them the trick is not just about teaching their staff customer service by rote. It is about enabling their staff to gain a deep understanding of individual customers and to respond to those in a personal, authentic and empathetic way. The latter requires so much more than the plastic smiling ‘have a good day’ style of customer service.

  For the commodity supplier, customer service is about creating relationships in the round with their customers (who in turn sell to consumers). So having market research about consumers is valuable if it helps the customer; investing in marketing direct to consumers is valuable if it helps the customer; ditto the basics of supplying the goods in full, on time and to quality which may mean sophisticated modelling and building in of flexibility in the supply chain around customer demands.

  For both these companies, their route to customer service is something rather more than a one off brand slogan. It requires a whole company culture of service, responding to customer (and internally to colleague) needs. It requires being on the front foot, anticipating customer needs, always looking ahead. And it requires leadership that walks that talk every moment.

  1 Harvard Business Review 2008, ‘Putting the Service-Profit chain to work’ by James L. Heskett, Thomas O. Jones, Gary W. Loveman, W. Earl Sasser, Jr., and Leonard A. Schlesinger

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  Published August 8, 2011
  Written by Andrew Jackson. This article is filed under: employee motivation, engagement, organisational culture
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• 7 ways to bring meaningful engagement to your business

  It’s a big ask. Chief executives are suddenly recognising that ‘effective engagement of our employees’ is the key to increased productivity, to profitability, to the successful implementation of strategy, the retention of key talent and thus the key to competitive advantage. They instinctively know it’s important to ensure employees want to follow through on delivering the strategic intent, yet there is much confusion about what it is, how you create it, whose job it is to make it happen and how you measure it.

  In reality it’s about getting people involved and inspired about something important and then contracting with each other to do something different as a result. Our conclusion is that employees in today’s world recognise they have choices and are not going to blindly follow commands from their leaders; they want to be engaged in a way that is meaningful to each of them and only then will they give their discretionary commitment and energy to take action .

  So how exactly do you go about it? Here are seven key learnings for meaningful engagement:

  1.  Start with the business case for engagement – what are you trying to engage people with? What will the benefits be?

  2.  Define engagement in language that is meaningful in your particular organisation context and to your key audiences (avoid the off-the shelf frameworks)

  3.  Convince your colleagues that engagement is more than a one-step process – it is a planned series of linked actions and supporting activities – for which leaders need new skills and confidence to use them

  4.  Clarify who’s responsible for making engagement work – CEO, top team, leaders, Communications and HR (all of them)

  5.  Use internal stories of successful engagement that have lead to measurable benefits and outcomes to illustrate what you mean by engagement – and to draw out the lessons of what works and what doesn’t

  6.  Use the power and influence of people who have been involved in those successes to convince others of the benefits of a more thoughtful and planned approach

  7.  Introduce regular ‘leading’ indicators of engagement so that you can use the data to prioritise the right activity that will deliver the results you want – before it is too late. Get these ingredients in place and the results will follow.

  What does meaningful engagement mean in your business?

  Read the full article "7 ways to bring meaningful engagement to your business"

  Published March 16, 2011
  Written by Virginia Merritt. This article is filed under: engagement
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• Another award!

  We’re delighted to announce that our client, The London Borough of Lewisham, has recently scooped an HR Excellence Award. They have just been announced as the winners of the 2010 Outstanding Employee Engagement Strategy award.

  We have worked hard with Lewisham on developing the ‘Lewisham Way’ to help engage their people and promote employee participation and breaking down barriers. So we’re thrilled to see all the hard work recognised by the HR annual awards.

  The judges said Lewisham showed “genuine involvement from employees at every level – proper engagement, not just for the sake of it”.

  Read more on the Outstanding Employee Engagement Strategy Award

  Read the full article "Another award!"

  Published July 22, 2010
  Written by John Bruce-Jones. This article is filed under: engagement
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• Direct engagement over religious marriages

  Recently I was honoured to be asked to take the role of independent chair and skilled facilitator for an exciting new initiative from the Ministry of Justice.

  In response to the issue of religious marriages not being legally recognised, the Secretary of State for Justice, Jack Straw, supported face-to-face meetings to discuss these issues directly with Imams, given their influence in the community and role in officiating over religious marriages.

  Having a religious marriage that is not recognised under civil law, often means people can encounter difficulties with division of assets should the marriage break down, and with inheritance and pension issues if a partner dies. It can mean that couples cannot receive married couples’ benefits and can lead to problems when applying for passports or to institutions such as universities. Feedback from Islamic groups was that people wishing to get married would benefit from more mosques being registered as buildings where marriages can take place.

  Thirty seven Imams attended the event, including others with influence in the wider community. The discussion was honest and open, with many difficulties aired and ways forward developed. By the end, many Imams present had decided to register as registrars so as to be able to perform civil marriages as well as religious ones.

  The seminar was considered by those attending to be a valuable and worthwhile exercise, hopefully the first of many. For me, it was a powerful reminder that nothing succeeds in communication like face-to-face engagement, where you are able to listen to people and respond to them in the moment. In this way, new solutions to what seem like difficult problems can often be found.

  I’d also like to pass on the news that the North African food at the Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre in West London is absolutely delicious – and the chef is available for private parties!

  Read the full article "Direct engagement over religious marriages"

  Published April 28, 2010
  Written by Beatrice Hollyer. This article is filed under: communication, engagement
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• Leadership development 1,000 at a time

  The old adage goes: leadership development is a tough, laborious and lengthy process, and usually happens one person at a time. When tackling it, the industry norm is to plump straight for 1:1 coaching or small group leadership courses, which are more often than not costly ventures. But are they really impactful enough, how about challenging the norm and trying something different?

  What do you do if you only have one hour to work with a leadership issue, and an audience of 1,000 people? You book a big theatre in the West End, work with actors to bring the leadership issue to life, and you facilitate a short and crisp session for impact.

  One of our clients did just that, and the topic of the hour was leadership on safety issues, the goal of the session to make them “think again” about their leadership behaviours and the impact it has on their safety culture.

  A critical success factor for a session of this size is to manage the energy in the room. It’s a bit like photography, often you have the opportunity to take several shots of a scene, but when you only have one chance, you have to get it right first time. It’s the same when on stage instructing 1,000 people to discuss their observations in pairs, there is no room for error.  They only have a few minutes and can’t waste precious time on understanding what the task is.

  It’s important to strike a balance between encouraging your audience and increasing their level of discomfort to get your message across – not an easy task with such a large audience. So pick a target of 3-5 audience members and focus on them as your representatives of the wider audience. Don’t be afraid to ask challenging rhetorical questions, backed up with the right tone, pace and body language to drive the message home.

  The success of the event was evidence that you should think again if someone says you can’t run an effective session with 1,000 people. So why not run your next business critical session on the big stage?

  Read the full article "Leadership development 1,000 at a time"

  Published March 12, 2010
  Written by Marcus Druen. This article is filed under: communication, engagement, leadership
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• Employee engagement award nominations

  Two Stanton Marris clients have recently been nominated for awards for our work with them.

  London Borough of Lewisham and Birmingham City Council have beaten tough competition to be nominated for the Employee Engagement award by Local Government Chronicle. The nominations highlighted ‘cutting edge corporate work’ which displayed councils’ ambition and imagination.

  Lewisham LBC has been nominated for the ‘Lewisham Way’, an innovative service transformation programme developed with HR by Stanton Marris to engage teams across the council in service improvement. 

  Birmingham City Council’s BEST programme, which has already won four major awards for the combined BCC BEST team and Stanton Marris, has been nominated again for transforming employee communication and engagement.  35,000 employees have experienced a BEST workshop, resulting in motivation up from 56% to 83%.

  We congratulate our clients on their nominations and are proud to be part of their success.  The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on 24 March 2010 at the Grosvenor House Hotel, and we wish them both the best of luck.

  Read the full article "Employee engagement award nominations"

  Published February 5, 2010
  Written by Beatrice Hollyer. This article is filed under: engagement
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