In February 2022, hundreds of leaders from service businesses across the world gathered together online to take part in the Global Frontline Experience Summit, an event we are delighted to sponsor and host again after its hugely successful first run in 2020. It was a phenomenal event with a contagious heaping of inspiration, excitement and possibility for anyone working in the customer experience and frontline service space.
If you missed the summit, brought to you by our Frontline Magic Community don't worry! All of the sessions are available right here, and are just as powerful the second time around.
David Kohari joined Skedulo’s customer experience team as the Global Head of Customer Success 2021, with 25 years of experience under his belt. Having previously held leadership positions in a variety of software companies ranging from start-ups like Skedulo to global system integrators like Accenture, it’s safe to say David is an expert on all things customer experience. During his presentation at the Global Frontline Experience Summit, David shares how his company has taken the concept of “connecting the dots”, to empower every frontline employee to deliver awesome experiences for their customers.
Connecting the dots is taking the time to ensure that everyone in an organization understands what is being measured, how it's being measured, and why it’s being measured. From the individual to the collective: connecting the dots is about everyone in an organization understanding how their individual efforts can positively impact the outcomes that the company is trying to achieve.
“In many cases our individual efforts can positively impact those KPIs at every level and ultimately lead us to the outcomes that we’re collectively trying to achieve”.
How has Skedulo transformed the concept of “connecting the dots” into an education and enablement program within their company? David explains…
Through his 25 years of experience, David has been in situations where there was a serious disconnect between frontline workers and the top-level executives. When he saw that ‘Connecting the Frontline to the Bottom Line’ was one of the ‘7 Habits of Empowered Frontline Teams’, it really resonated.
“I saw this and I would say it really resonated with me because I’ve been a big advocate of this idea for a long time”.
Connecting the frontline to the bottom line is about giving frontline employees insight and oversight into wider business metrics that help them to understand how their role fits into the bigger picture.
Why is this important?
When you consider the fact that 1 trillion dollars is lost every year in America due to a lack of cross-departmental coordination, it’s not hard to agree with David’s point.
You can’t expect employees to deliver awesome experiences if you don’t outline what an awesome experience actually looks like. Awesome to one employee, could be completely average to another. Education is about setting clear service standards, making them loud and clear to all employees and coaching and educating employees on the same standards.
For example, one of your service standards might be to “personalize wherever possible”. It doesn't mean much without further education and follow up. Employees need to be coached around how that service standard is put into practice (for instance, addressing customers by name) and recognized when they get things right. Educating on the same standards, and using the same measurement metrics, helps teams streamline their focus and work towards collective goals.
David says that each employee needs to understand how their relationship with customers impacts the end results. One way to reinforce this education is through connecting teams to customer feedback. This way, teams are able to see in real-time how their actions impact customer experiences, what they’re doing well, and what they need to do to improve.
What tools and technology do your teams need in order to thrive in their work? Are there solutions that will enable them to do their job better? Skedulo believes that providing tools that can measure performance is key to achieving a full alignment across the company.
As AskNicely CEO Aaron Ward said “The software industry has done a pretty good job building technology for sales people, marketers, developers and accountants, but have all but ignored the service person on the frontline who deals with the actual customer”.
David shares how Skedulo has made significant investments that allow their employees to have more in depth oversight on their personal tasks, organization, goals, and how their actions impact wider company metrics.
“We take all that information and we aggregate it and present it in a way so that across the organization, you have sort of a consistent visibility”
“Frontline teams are happier when they understand the why.”
David shares a new perspective with us, flipping the question, “Is this information we should share with the team?” to “why shouldn't we share this information with the team?”.
In Skedulo, it is small changes like this that create big cultural shifts.
David argues that fostering a culture of transparency has significant benefits – it creates an undeniable level of trust, respect and accountability across departments, plus, it helps employees see and feel the impact they’re making and empowers them to keep achieving.
David asks: why does this matter? What does connecting the dots ultimately do? In Skedulo’s experience, connecting the dots has dramatically improved employee satisfaction and retention.
“It's worth your time and energy to make sure you’re connecting the dots for your employees”.
And it makes sense, right? When you:
… You create an aligned, and empowered workforce who are more likely to feel satsided in the work they’re doing. And we all know by now that happy, satisfied frontline employees lead to happy, satisfied customers.
A huge THANK YOU to David for his time and energy at the Global Frontline Experience Summit. It was an incredible presentation that so many learnt from.
