Corporate Strategy Development

Jarlath Moloney

Delivering Customer Service Excellence: A Case Study on Strategy Box’s Blended Approach

Introduction

In today’s competitive business landscape, delivering exceptional customer service has become a vital differentiator for organisations striving to establish long-term success. This case study explores how Strategy Box, a leading consulting firm, partnered with Client A to enhance their service excellence through a blended approach of client and internal team interviews, followed by a facilitated session utilising their own design thinking framework. By focusing on specific objectives and leveraging collaborative brainstorming, Strategy Box aimed to empower Client A to elevate their customer service to new heights.

 

The Challenge

Client A, a prominent player in their industry, recognised the importance of customer service excellence as a key driver of customer satisfaction, loyalty, and business growth. They sought to take their customer service to the next level by identifying opportunities for improvement and developing a comprehensive action plan. With this very specific objective in mind, Client A engaged Strategy Box to guide them through the process and deliver measurable results.

 

The Solution

Strategy Box’s approach began by conducting in-depth interviews with both Client A’s clients and their internal team members. These interviews provided valuable insights into the current state of their customer service, identifying pain points, challenges, and areas for improvement. By gathering perspectives from both sides, Strategy Box gained a comprehensive understanding of the customer experience landscape within Client A’s organisation.

Armed with the insights from the interviews, Strategy Box organised a facilitated session involving key stakeholders from Client A’s team. Employing their own design thinking framework, the session was structured to foster collaboration, creativity, and innovation. The framework facilitated the exploration of the identified opportunities and encouraged participants to generate ideas, solutions, and strategies.

Throughout the brainstorming session, Strategy Box guided the team through a series of exercises that helped them think beyond conventional boundaries, challenging assumptions and unlocking untapped potential. The focus was not only on immediate improvements but also on long-term transformational changes that would solidify Client A’s position as a provider of exceptional customer service.

 

The Results

The blended approach employed by Strategy Box proved instrumental in empowering Client A to deliver service excellence consistently. The collaborative efforts of the client’s internal team, guided by Strategy Box’s expertise, culminated in a comprehensive action plan tailored to their specific needs and goals.

The results achieved by Client A were significant and tangible. The action plan addressed the identified opportunities head-on, leveraging innovative strategies and best practices. It encompassed enhancements in various aspects of the customer journey, including communication channels, response time, personalised interactions, and streamlined processes.

As a result of implementing the action plan, Client A experienced a marked improvement in customer satisfaction scores, increased customer loyalty, and a rise in positive customer feedback. The organisation’s reputation as a provider of outstanding customer service became a driving force behind their continued success.

Furthermore, the collaborative approach fostered a sense of ownership and empowerment among Client A’s internal team members. They embraced the culture of customer-centricity and actively contributed to the ongoing refinement of their customer service strategies. This newfound enthusiasm and dedication significantly boosted employee morale and engagement.

 

Conclusion

Through their blended approach of interviewing clients and internal team members, followed by a facilitated session utilising design thinking, Strategy Box successfully assisted Client A in delivering customer service excellence on a consistent basis. By identifying opportunities, generating innovative ideas, and developing a tailored action plan, Strategy Box empowered Client A to enhance their customer service offerings and exceed customer expectations.

Client A’s commitment to service excellence, combined with Strategy Box’s expertise, resulted in a significant transformation of their customer service landscape. By embracing a customer-centric mindset and implementing the action plan, Client A solidified their reputation as a leader in their industry, fostering customer loyalty and driving sustainable business growth.

 

“Great off site-day today on further developing client service excellence by the Heneghan team, facilitated by Jennifer Kelly of StrategyBox. And delighted our board member and former Taoiseach Enda Kenny could join a dynamic and productive event. “

– Nigel Heneghan, Managing Director at Heneghan Strategic Communications

 

 

 

A fantastic Excerpt from the book Good to Great by Jim Collins

Are you a hedgehog or a fox?

There’s this wonderful essay called “The Hedgehog and the Fox” that was written by Isaiah Berlin, a philosopher-thinker; and he basically said there are two types of thinkers. There are hedgehogs and there are foxes. Now, the hedgehog and the fox are different in the following way. The foxes, they love complexity. They love all the moving parts. They love basically showing how smart they are by making things so complex that other people can’t understand them. Hedgehogs, on the other hand, are a different breed. Hedgehogs tend to take the approach of saying, “You know, I know the world is complex, but we can’t function if we don’t simplify it.” What hedgehogs tend to do is get one big idea and focus on that, simplifying a complex world down to a fundamental, simple idea that is essentially right. Now, it turns out that in different walks of life, some walks of life Favor foxes; some walks of life Favor hedgehogs. So, I don’t want to say that hedgehog is always better than fox. In the world of leadership, the hedgehogs win.

Those who built the good-to-great companies were, to one degree or another, hedgehogs. They used their hedgehog nature to drive toward what we came to call a Hedgehog Concept for their companies. Those who led the comparison companies tended to be foxes, never gaining the clarifying advantage of a Hedgehog Concept, being instead scattered, diffused, and inconsistent.

 

Seeing the bigger picture with SWOT

How a SWOT helps you to step back and look at the bigger picture

In the ever-evolving world of business, staying ahead of the competition and charting a successful course for your company can be a complex and daunting task. With so many moving parts, it’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day operations and lose sight of the bigger picture. This is where a SWOT analysis comes to the rescue.

At StrategyBox.ie, we understand the importance of simplifying strategic planning for businesses, and one tool that has proven invaluable in achieving this is the SWOT analysis. In this blog, we’ll dive into what a SWOT analysis is and how it can help you step back, gain perspective, and see the broader strategic landscape for your business.

What Is a SWOT Analysis?

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It is a structured planning method that helps organisations identify and evaluate these four key elements. Let’s break down each component:

  1. Strengths: These are internal attributes that give your business a competitive advantage. They could include a strong brand, talented employees, efficient processes, or innovative products.
  2. Weaknesses: These are internal factors that hinder your business’s growth and success. Examples may include limited resources, outdated technology, or a lack of specific skills within the team.
  3. Opportunities: Opportunities are external factors that could positively impact your business. These might include emerging markets, trends, or changes in consumer behavior that you can capitalise on.
  4. Threats: Threats are external factors that could pose challenges or risks to your business. These could be economic downturns, increasing competition, or regulatory changes.

How a SWOT Analysis Helps You Step Back

Now that we’ve defined what a SWOT analysis is, let’s explore how it can help you gain a broader perspective on your business:

  1. Objective Assessment: Conducting a SWOT analysis requires you to objectively evaluate your business. This process encourages you to look beyond your preconceived notions and see your organisation’s true strengths and weaknesses.
  2. Identifying Blind Spots: Often, when immersed in the day-to-day operations, it’s easy to overlook certain aspects of your business. A SWOT analysis can help you identify blind spots and areas that need improvement.
  3. Strategic Prioritisation: By categorising your findings into strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, you can prioritise strategic initiatives. This allows you to focus on leveraging your strengths and addressing your weaknesses while capitalising on opportunities and mitigating threats.
  4. Improved Decision-Making: Armed with a clear understanding of your business’s internal and external factors, you’ll be better equipped to make informed decisions. Whether it’s expanding into a new market or investing in technology upgrades, a SWOT analysis provides a solid foundation for decision-making.
  5. Enhanced Communication: When your team shares a common understanding of your business’s position and potential, communication becomes more effective. A SWOT analysis facilitates discussions and aligns everyone toward a shared vision.

 

Tips for Conducting a Focused SWOT Analysis

  1. Prioritise Key Factors: Not all strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats are of equal importance. Focus on the most significant ones that have the most substantial impact on your business.
  2. Consider Relevance: Assess the relevance of each factor to your current business objectives and market conditions. Some factors may be more relevant at certain times than others.
  3. Quantify Where Possible: Whenever possible, quantify the factors you identify. For example, instead of saying “strong customer base,” specify the number of loyal customers or the percentage of market share you have.
  4. Involve Your Team: Collaborate with your team to gather diverse perspectives. Different team members may have unique insights into your business’s strengths and weaknesses.
  5. Set SMART Goals: When identifying opportunities and threats, frame them as Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) goals. This will make it easier to determine their impact and feasibility.
  6. Consider the Competitive Landscape: Analyse how your strengths and weaknesses compare to those of your competitors. Identifying where you outshine them or where you lag behind can help you focus your efforts.

Here are some examples to help you imagine the result

Strengths:
  • Example 1: Instead of a vague strength like “good customer service,” focus on specific strengths such as “24/7 customer support,” “average response time of under 30 minutes,” or “consistently high customer satisfaction ratings.”
  • Example 2: If you have a strong online presence, specify the platforms where you excel, like “10,000 engaged followers on Instagram” or “top-rated seller on eBay.”
Weaknesses:
  • Example 1: Rather than a general weakness like “limited budget,” narrow it down to specifics such as “insufficient marketing budget for new product launches” or “high employee turnover in the past year.”
  • Example 2: If your technology is outdated, be specific about the systems or processes affected, like “legacy CRM system causing delays in customer data updates.”
Opportunities:
  • Example 1: Instead of a broad opportunity like “market growth,” pinpoint specific market segments or niches where growth is most likely, such as “expanding into the emerging Gen S market.”
  • Example 2: If you’ve identified a partnership opportunity, specify the potential partner and the expected benefits, like “collaboration with XYZ Inc. to access their extensive distribution network.”
Threats:
  • Example 1: Rather than a generic threat like “economic downturn,” identify the aspects of your business that are most vulnerable, such as “reliance on a single supplier in a volatile region.”
  • Example 2: If you’re concerned about increasing competition, specify the competitors and their strategies that pose the most significant threat, like “Entry of XYZ Corporation with aggressive pricing and marketing campaigns.”

By following these tips and using specific examples like the ones provided, you can focus your SWOT analysis on the critical factors that demand your attention and action, ensuring a more effective strategic planning process for your business.

And remember that a SWOT helps you stay agile and adaptable. Markets evolve, competitors innovate, and customer preferences shift. By revisiting your SWOT analysis regularly, you remain aware of emerging opportunities and threats, allowing you to pivot and seize new avenues for growth while safeguarding against potential pitfalls.

A well-constructed SWOT analysis will help you in resource allocation. It assists you in channelling your time, energy, and investments where they matter most. By identifying your core strengths and focusing on opportunities aligned with them, you maximise your chances of success while minimising wasted resources on less promising ventures.

Establishing Priorities

Priorities, Priorities, Priorities. It is hard not to get overwhelmed on a daily basis.

Several years ago when I worked in a global Tech company, I oversaw thousands of products being shipped each day. Due to the nature of the job, every department would contact me with requests for their customers or items that involved the supply chain and guess what, they all said that their item was a priority. So I quickly learned that if everything is a priority then nothing becomes a priority as everything is now in the same bucket.

I am a strategic planner by profession and by nature and what I find works well for me is to link my output back to my strategic objectives and goals that I want to achieve, which helps me become a lot more productive.

This may be of help to you…

I start off by reviewing my year and my strategic outcomes and then I break it down in quarterly and monthly goals. By doing this, you get to focus on manageable blocks of work which will help you to avoid overwhelm and focus on the tasks at hand. 

Before you start to review your top priorities for the week, take a look at your monthly goals, as you should always link your tasks to what you are trying to achieve overall.

Then to map out your priorities for the week, I would recommend:

  1. ​List out / write down randomly, all of the items that are on your list. You can use a sheet of paper or use Post IT notes.
  2. ​Write beside the list or put the POST ITs in the order of  – Urgent, Not Urgent, Important, Not important  ( U, NU, I, NI)
  3. ​Bucket 1: Quick Wins/Do todayLet’s look at the  Urgent & Important first – These are the ones you should tackle first. Differentiating what is really urgent is critical here. If the team or a customer or potential customer requires this urgently and it is important to win work then this should be added to the Quick Wins /DO TODAY – example ​Call back a sales lead or Give a demo
  4. ​Bucket 2: Major Projects/Schedule in If it is a project that is really important and needs to be delivered at a later date then this should be added to the Important but not urgent. “Major Projects/Schedule in” bucket, so you can work on part of it this week to meet the deadline, and schedule in time to get it done – example Planning an event/webinar – live in 3 months
  5. ​Bucket 3: Delegateif there are tasks that do not need your expertise to do them, then you should try and delegate them. examples include, booking a room for a meeting, booking flights for a meeting next month etc.
  6. ​Bucket 4:  Thankless tasks.These are the tasks that do not have any measurable value. An example would be searching the internet for information. A person could take varying times to find the information, with no real value of the task. The task may need to be completed to find this information to get a result in the future, but this task should be scheduled, as its repetitive and could suck up a lot of valuable time. Prioritise this after you have reviewed your full list.

The best KPI’s to run your business

The Metrics you need – made simple

The supply chain is the backbone of any business, and the value of an efficient supply chain can be measured in the right KPIs. For the pharmaceutical, MedTech, manufacturing and logistics industries, maintaining a strong supply chain is key to meeting the expectations of both partners and customers. Businesses are increasingly feeling the strain of inefficient supply chains, whether it is due to increasing costs, a more competitive and global market or increased customer expectations. In addition to these challenges, the worsening geopolitical climate following on the back of the pandemic has made clear the benefits of an optimised supply chain.

What are supply chain KPIs?

A supply chain KPI, or key performance indicator is a specific metric established to quantify supply chain performance in a specific area. They measure performance over time and will vary between businesses, and even at a team level. Various KPIs can be used at all levels throughout an organisation to evaluate the performance of a specific process, partner, team or product. The insights gained by these metrics allow businesses to reduce costs, generate more business and increase efficiencies across the supply chain.

Top KPIs to improve your supply chain

Strong data capture and real-time visibility are only useful when a team knows what key metrics to judge performance by. Here are some of the top supply chain management KPIs that can help run a more effective, efficient, and prosperous organisation.

Cash to cash cycle time

The cash to cash or C2C time cycle is a common and effective supply chain KPI. It visualises the period between the moment a payment is made to the suppliers and received from the customer. The three core parameters of the C2C time cycle are DOI (days of inventory), DOP (days of payables) and DOR (days of receivables). While every business will have a different cash to cash cycle time based on the nature of its business, reducing this time will ensure that a business can run its operations with money spending less time tied up in other sources.

Inventory turnover

Inventory turnover is another critical supply chain KPI. It measures the time a business will take to sell or process its entire inventory. This is especially relevant for logistics, as it provides a business with insights into how efficiently it is fulfilling orders, gaining new sales and processing stock. A higher number here shows a faster turnover and is a great performance indicator in general.

Perfect order delivery rate

The perfect order delivery rate or perfect order rate is one of the most critical KPIs, as it assesses the overall performance of the supply chain. It does this by measuring the ability of the supply chain to complete orders without incidents. Reducing this number means there is less waste in damages, delays and inventory losses. It shows the ability of a supply chain to deliver results on time and on or under budget, ultimately helping customer satisfaction and retention.

 

How to create an effective supply chain KPI dashboard

The list of KPIs is long and varied, depending on the business, team level and overall goals, so it’s important to define the most valuable KPIs for your desired outcomes.

At StrategyBox, we take the time to understand your needs and define the KPIs that will give your supply chain the biggest improvement. We then connect to all the systems and processes you need to monitor, store that data securely and create a dashboard that will give you that data, accessible anywhere in the world, in real-time. We are your partner on your business planning journey.

Contact us today

Top tips for any business leader building out their next Business Plan

Top tips for business planning

It is that time of year again where most businesses are launching into their Strategic Planning Cycle. The whole purpose of undertaking a strategic planning cycle is to identify new areas of opportunity that will add value to your business and formulate a plan to get there. Most businesses undertake this review as part of their yearly planning cycle, to ensure they keep up the momentum in the company, they had from the prior year’s objectives and ensure they always keep an eye on the longer-term goal. Other business, usually smaller business undertakes the review as an ad hoc review when they want to improve performance in an area of their business, or they want to expand in terms of their product or market. Either way, the trigger point for any CEO to undertake a strategic review, will be that they require something to change or a plan to get to a certain point. Now, is a time where most businesses are feeling the pain of cash flow and are looking for operational cost improvement initiatives or a change in direction.

If you are a CEO and you are looking to define where your company is going and want to formulate a plan to get there, I have put these simple steps below to give you some guidance. There is effort, time, and resources that go hand in hand with these types of plans. BUT, if you plan it out wisely, you can save a lot of time and effort and create a structured plan that will get results.

The reason you should start looking at this nearing the end of the year is that it gives you the opportunity to forecast for the end of the year and establish the goals that you want to achieve for 2024. Your Board or Shareholders and your team will be looking to get this from their leader anyway, so you may as well give yourself the time to do it. Planning may be the last thing on your mind, but a CEO’s mindset to be able to shift above the clouds and delegate some of the operational load is key. You do not have to consume all your energy into this, it may just take a little planning to get this done in the months ahead.

 

Creating Success

What you can do now to set you up for success.

  • ​Create a governance calendar.This will allow you to plan out the sessions that you need to have with your leadership team and the financial team to understand the current situation.
  • ​Get your finance team to prepare the Financial forecastsso you can take a closer look at the assumptions and projections.
  • ​Map out time to look at how the market is changing In the current environment and put some scenarios around how this will affect you in the longer term.
  • ​Understand your sales forecasts.Which Clients are using your services still? Which clients have put their spending on hold?
  • ​Review your Lessons learned.I cannot reiterate how important it is that you and your team look back on your lessons learned. Imagine the wealth of knowledge that you would get from just looking at things like, how your team reacted to the COVID 19 situation or how your projects were delivered or how your IT infrastructure was effective enough to get you through. This is unbelievably valuable information that you should be collecting after each project or event. There are easy ways to prepare a lesson learned and to track them.
  • ​Get your team’s buy-in and input. Tell your teams that you are planning and that you want their input. After all, you are the leader of the organisation and that is what they expect you to be doing. You need to ensure you have a flywheel effect of momentum going on in your company. People that you hired should be self-motivated because they want the company to succeed. If that is not the case, you need to revisit that with the employees.
  • ​In order to get the team’s buy-inThere are multiple questions that you can ask your team, which is a way to provide input into where they think the business is positioned now and where they think the company could be in the future. This format can be easily generated to pull information from your team even virtually. This information then can be gathered into a SWOT analysis and can be the basis for planning through your next steps.

Remember, 

Your Strategic plan is usually set out over a longer period. This is a strategy that you have invested in. ideally, you will be reviewing your Strategy every 6 months to see if there are any drivers that require change. This will be a tweak to your strategy. Your Strategic planning cycle is a way to ensure that you are tying down what is happening operationally to your strategy. This means that you are linking Strategy to operational execution and therefore your Strategy does not become irrelevant, it becomes a living force, where your team has visibility and everyone on your team is rowing in the same direction. There is a good way to link Strategy to work that your teams are doing.

Contact us for more information.