As we cautiously emerge from beneath the shadow of COVID-19 and return to the workplace our thoughts begin to embrace the many uncertainties that confront us. More especially, how best to quickly restart our organisations in an environment where the rules are yet still mostly undefined, but likely to be very different than before and the expectations of our customers may well have changed substantially. What this pandemic has taught us is that we need to configure our organisations differently. They need to be much more agile, differentiated and yet at the same time inherently more robust. And, we need to accelerate our restart process to claim first-mover advantage in a marketplace that will very likely be much smaller, more selective, more aggressive, and very much more competitive than before. All this speaks of an organisational model that has an inherently flatter structure, distributed leadership, wider spans of individual control, devolved authorities and accountabilities, higher levels of visibility, rapid decision-making capabilities and needs to leverage its key differentiators in the eyes of its customers. Intuitively, this means the business can be continually tuned to operate at maximum effectiveness as a closely knit entity without the historical stove-pipe behaviours, tribes and process encumbrances that have existed before. It also requires a closely aligned, properly integrated people, process and technology infrastructure to help support, enable and drive it. Only through achieving this will the customer experience become truly enhanced!
Our own pre-COVID 19 market surveys tell us that 85% of companies polled agree that “digital” will change their operating model in the next three years. Of those, 50% agree they lack the necessary leadership, vison, experience, internal competencies and capabilities to create a viable digital strategy. And 40% of those who believe they could create a working strategy readily acknowledge that they are incapable of successfully executing a digital transformation without expert outside assistance to shore up their skill gaps. History has proven that 60% of all internally run, staffed and executed business transformation programmes fail within their first six months; or substantially fail to deliver on their original promises by the point disappointed and disgruntled executives grudgingly call time on them. And of those that do succeed, in some way or another, or at least manage to stagger across the finishing line, they end up costing the business six-times what it would have originally cost to employ professional change agents to help create the strategy and tactics that reflect the “art of the possible” and support the subsequent implementation through to its conclusion. Add to this picture the additional internal and external complications brought about by the pandemic, evidence would suggest attempting to restart your business at speed to maximise competitive advantage may not be a journey you should consider taking without a cadre of external experts by your side to provide insights, assistance and guidance where necessary.
So, accepting “it’s going to be tough out there” in the next few years, how do you rapidly accelerate out of the pandemic by first and foremost engaging, exciting and delighting your customers and turbocharge your return to competitiveness with any guarantee that you will be successful?
“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job to make the customer experience a little bit better.”
-Jeff Bezos, Amazon
Here at Centigo, we have 300+ consultants who are highly qualified, well trained and deeply experienced across a wide range of industries that can be deployed rapidly to help you put your business back to work in a safe, structured and compliant manner. Members of our team have successfully helped many businesses, large and small, through this kind of Customer Service Excellence transformation before and can bring to the table well tried and tested approaches and instantly deployable tools and techniques that can be tailored to meet your specific needs.
We can help you: -
• Understand the changed nature of your markets and customers in the post COVID-19 world
• Create an appropriately tiered Customer Service Excellence strategy to accelerate your return to competitiveness and maximise your return on investment
• Validate and verify the strategy is adequate in fit, form, and function to guarantee it meets both your exact current as well as forecast future business needs
• Help you organise, manage and deliver appropriately tiered digital content to assert your USP’s
• Choose an appropriate CRM tool to meet the needs of your business, now and in the future
• Create, implement and successfully deliver digital toolsets and techniques to maximise sales force effectiveness, customer engagement and customer retention
• Create and deliver new operational metrics to enable visibility and control throughout the business
• Provide the necessary process enhancements/changes throughout your end-to-end business functions to ensure your capability to supply matches your new capability to find, engage and retain customers
• Support your business transformation journey with an array of internationally respected experts who will in a timely and efficient manner deliver into your transformation world-class strategy, people, process and technology thinking, skills and capabilities
• Throughout and after your transformation to ensure you reach a stable running position, maintain operating efficiency and agility and continue to upskill all your staff and empower them to run and maintain your new business at the peak of efficiency
Getting back to work will need the application of different skills and expertise depending on your market sector. Businesses reach out to, and rely upon, Centigo every day when they realise their changed circumstances now dictate informed, experienced and authoritative thinking is required. To find out how Centigo can help you successfully return to competitiveness quickly and safely please feel free to contact one of our partners below.
