Customer Driven Service at Finning
Finning UK already has a reputation for meeting and exceeding customer expectations. But this innovative company is ambitious for more - it is redesigning itself around the needs of its customers to scale the heights of legendary service. Now the rest of the world is following the UK's lead. This article explains how.
The Background
Finning is a Canadian owned international corporation, established over seventy years ago, which supplies and supports Caterpillar equipment - everything from forklift trucks to bulldozers.
The UK division, based in Cannock, Staffordshire, has enjoyed increased market share in each of the last four years. It currently employs over 2500 people and revenues are in excess of £450 million. Finning employees have a wealth of specialist knowledge, industry experience and proven ability. Hand in hand with this goes a uniquely focused approach to meeting customer requirements.
Customer satisfaction has always been high, but Finning are ambitious to scale new heights of customer service. In 2002, with a 78% customer satisfaction rating, the company launched a major change programme with the aim of ensuring a 95% customer satisfaction score.
The Challenge
Stuart Chapman is training and development manager at Finning: "Clearly, we were already providing good customer service. However, we wanted to develop a culture of service excellence, consistent across our entire organisation. We wanted everyone in Finning to have a shared view of what service excellence is."
"In our marketplace, it's difficult to differentiate yourself on products alone," says Steve Hendry, Finning customer services director. "To be different from our competitors, we need to deliver an excellent customer experience."
Finning realised that they would not achieve this shift in service levels through tweaking existing practices. They knew that Finning needed to redesign itself around its customers' needs.
The company had operated through a branch network without a central customer service function, and customer feedback highlighted an inconsistency in service levels from branch to branch. Customer transactions were also not being followed up properly due to the day to day pressures on branch staff. Finning decided that in order to provide a consistently excellent level of customer service, they needed to create a culture of service excellence across the entire organisation, supported by a central service operation.
The Solution
Appointing Academee
In November 2002, following a rigorous selection process involving a panel of directors and senior managers from every division, Finning appointed management consultancy and learning specialists, Academee, to help them achieve their objectives. "I was keen to involve representatives from every part of the organisation at this initial stage," says Stuart Chapman. "It was an important first step in creating a consistent service culture, and in Academee we found a training partner who could work across all Finning's businesses to communicate one clear message."
Strategy workshops and creating a service culture
Academee's remit was to help create a culture of service excellence across Finning and to help develop new customer service centres to meet the needs of both its construction industry and materials handling divisions. Academee, who specialise in managing customer relationships, began by facilitating senior management workshops to define the aims and objectives of the new centres. Timescales were tight as the service centres were due to go live in February 2003.
'Customer Driven Service' training
Following the management workshops, Academee worked closely in partnership with Finning to design a programme of customer service training for the service centres' newly appointed staff. The programme began by helping these staff to understand the case for change through a one-day 'Customer Driven Service' workshop. The thinking behind Finning's customer centred strategy was explained and staff had the opportunity to discuss this, helping to create buy-in and ownership.
'Power of the Phone' and supervisor training
This was followed by a two day 'Power of the Phone' training workshop which helped staff to use the phone as an effective customer service tool. In addition, a programme for supervisors demonstrated the benefits of leadership over the more traditional 'telling' style of management and imparted key leadership skills such as coaching and motivation. A key aim of the supervisor programme was to ensure that supervisors could effectively support the new staff behaviours being developed. The training also helped supervisors to understand the overall philosophy of 'Customer Driven Service.'
Alongside these Academee training programmes, Finning's in-house training staff delivered technical skills training. Academee and Finning worked closely together to ensure that the different types of training were closely integrated, focusing on the common goal of outstanding customer service.
The service centres were operational at the beginning of 2003, and customer feedback so far has been positive and helped to inform their ongoing development.
"Academee have not only organised training events and designed learning material, they have shared their expertise and introduced methodologies, models and techniques to really get people thinking and help them deliver," says Steve Hendry.
'Customer Driven Service' for engineers
In line with Finning's customer centred strategy, Academee has now started rolling out customer service excellence training to Finning's engineers. The aim of this training is to build on engineers' existing skills and abilities by agreeing the foundations of customer service, exploring tools and techniques for delivering great service, and ensuring there is a consistent understanding of what customer driven service is to Finning.
"Training the engineers has been our biggest step so far," says Steve Hendry. "Because they deal face to face with our customers, they are key to our service success. Winning their hearts and minds is key. They have excellent technical skills, are great problem solvers, very switched on and have lots of energy. We need to harness this energy and actively engage them in our drive for service excellence."
A global conference
In June 2003, a major global Finning conference for 25 key senior managers from across three continents was held in the UK. The focus of this conference was on service excellence and its aim was to unite Finning people globally behind the goal of outstanding service.
"The conference was a key opportunity for us to further define exactly what service excellence means to Finning," says Steve Hendry. "It enabled us to articulate our service vision, mission and objectives." Building on the successful work already carried out in the UK, Academee consultants facilitated workshops to help define Finning's unique proposition and create global buy-in. Individuals have now returned to their geographical area to implement the new customer service strategy through motivating and inspiring their colleagues across the world to make it happen.
A unique e-surround
To support global rollout, 'Finningshare' was created. Finningshare is a unique web-based community environment, created by Academee, which enables best practice to be shared across regions. Initially launched within Finning's customer service community, it is being viewed as a pilot for potential rollout across other functional areas.
Integrated Training
Building on the success of the work already done, Finning have continued to work with Academee on a range of targeted training programs including performance management, communications skills and managing remote teams - programmes which will support the learning already in place and help to embed it in the workplace.
The Benefits and the Future
Following the success of the initial strategy workshops, the UK senior management team is now focused on growth plans to drive business forward over the next 12 months. Ongoing development is supporting this.
"One of the most important things we've learned is to listen more to staff and consult more widely with them," says Steve Hendry. "We need to optimise employee loyalty in order to maximise customer loyalty. If we do this, our business will grow." "Customer service excellence will become a core part of our ongoing staff training and development," says Stuart Chapman. "However, this training must constantly develop in order to reflect the changing demands of service excellence. What people thought of as great service five years ago is different to what we think of as great service today."
In 2004, Finning plan to continue rolling out the 'Customer Driven Service' programme across other parts of the business, including areas such as HR, who are meeting the needs of internal rather than external customers. They are also working closely with Academee to design a major supervisor and manager development programme.
Academee will also facilitate an international HR conference early in 2004, where Finning's global HR leaders will plan an international HR strategy, focusing on employee engagement and its impact on customer service.
"We've created a very flexible overall training model," says Stuart Chapman. "There are some training needs I'd class as divisional: for example, what project management training means in Power Systems is very different from what it means in IT. However, there are other training needs that are consistent right across Finning, and customer service excellence is the greatest single example of this. It's fundamental."
Finning UK, an innovative and ambitious company, has redesigned itself around the needs of its customers to scale the heights of legendary service.
