When going through a period of transformation and re-organization, you will have to invest a lot of time internally, rather than in customers.
With a well performed transformation, your organisation will gain market shares and happy employees. But how do you make sure that your clients are happy while you focus on your business transformation? At the same time as you are improving systems, increasing efficiency and enabling growth, you need to maintain the customer experience. In order to maintain customer satisfaction at the same time as you are focusing on reaching your transformation goals, you might consider engaging an executive interim manager with a substantial experience within change management.
Four ways of driving change and keep up customer satisfaction
- Change leadership – in order to reach your goals, you need to have the team onboard. Communication is key in order to get the whole organization to understand and work towards the same goals. If the change is affecting your clients, your client-facing employees need to be able to explain the reasons for them. Make sure to explain why this is necessary and the positive outcome to your employees, and this will be relayed to your clients.
- Marketing – if there is a change to your product or service, you will need to add a bigger sell-on to clients. Again, communication is key. You will have to communicate how this will affect your them and why they should not switch to other providers. How will this changed product or service benefit your clients? A well thought through marketing strategy communicated through your homepage, social media and press releases is essential.
- Tracking your project – all changes should be reviewed and measured. Monitor how internal changes affect your customer support your efficiency and productivity. What is the feedback from your clients? How many outgoing calls are made every week? Measuring metrics allows the change manager to intervene if necessary.
- Keep up the motivation and energy – when transformation projects are initiated, they often result in a burst of energy at first, and then fade out as the weeks go by as the managers and employees lose sight of why the change was started in the first place. This can lead to your customers having no idea of why your product or service has changed and wanting things to be as they used to be. A dedicated and experienced change leader can keep the project on track.