Designing a great customer service from the ground up​

smart/consult & smart/bench case studies

The client

Our client, a combined utilities provider, aimed to provide a seamless customer experience across all its services and products, whilst saving customers money and ‘hassle’. However, a period of rapid growth had left the business lacking in infrastructure to manage this customer experience fully. With little-to-no transparency across service divisions, it was hard for employees to map the customer journey, and service was suffering as a result. A new customer management system would have been ideal – but this would have disrupted service provision.​

We needed to find a way to improve how our client handled its customer journeys – without impacting its growth ambitions and existing services.

Our approach

From the outset, we agreed with our client three primary objectives with our client: to agree on the “end-state vision” and get support & engagement for this; to retain people, and gain buy-in & commitment; and to be a go-to person for their new CIO, in terms of guiding the necessary change and transition activities. The first two formed our initial Discovery phase. Then, engaging with the different business divisions, we embarked upon a Design phase, challenging existing business processes and developing a Target Operating model that would work across the business. Once we had buy-in from all our main stakeholders, we were able to communicate our intentions through the business, resulting in support and engagement. We rolled out and embedded new processes and technologies in stages, underpinned by a carefully managed plan that would not impact day to day operations. Workshops were run to fully educate and engage employees in the new systems, and the supporting values and behaviours.​

Great results

Our client has since built a strong reputation in its sector as a provider of great customer service, and great value. Their customer base has continued to grow – but importantly, this has not been to the detriment of its engagement and satisfaction results. Employees are fully engaged in the business’s journey, and play a strong part in building the business. This project was a great demonstration of how culture and communications actively supports business process re-design: a true “hearts and minds” piece of work with lasting results.