Customer and employee engagement with a domestic appliance manufacturer
Before joining the Silvermaple Team Alex Walker was Head of Customer Experience and an Executive Director at Miele. Alex shares with us here how she enabled Miele to enhance the quality of the customer experience through increasing employee engagement. Since then she has successfully applied this approach within both the automotive industry and health sectors.
Silvermaple
Alex's reflections
When I reflect on what worked at Miele, but also what we have managed to repeat elsewhere, there are undoubtedly several key ingredients that contribute to success. The Executive Team (particularly the CEO) need to be prepared to take a risk and place genuine trust in first line managers and frontline staff. This needs to be accompanied by a willingness to let people develop and implement solutions for themselves. It is only by truly allowing staff to experience this that the organisation can start to reinforce initiative, innovation and agility in a frequent and consistent manner.
What we needed
As a world class brand, our aspiration was to deliver a world class level of customer service. A quality of service which continued to set us apart from our competitors and make the customers’ interaction with Miele a special experience. The brief was to ensure a joined-up customer approach that delivered the Miele difference.
What we did
We held workshops with over a third of our employee base, including remote technicians. Our teams are the experts in what they do and the ones spending time with our customers. We knew they had the answers. We worked on a cycle of service, asking them for ideas and solutions to creating the perfect customer experience. The number of great ideas was overwhelming! As a result, we created our Roadmap – our one page, compelling strategic narrative.
The Roadmap illustrated our direction of travel. It made it clear to everyone where we were going. Each team had their own Roadmap that cascaded from the main strategy and showed how their objectives connected to the organisational ones. They knew what part they played in the success of the business, and the division. Each team created their Roadmaps with other teams, to ensure that their agendas were the same.
It was more than just a picture. Each area has a scorecard that related to their Roadmap. It enabled us to review progress and ensure we were on track in executing our plan. It created accountability and pace around delivery. When people delivered – we really celebrated that success therefore reinforcing those behaviours for the next time.
The results
- We saw a significant rise in Net Promoter Score over a two-year period.
- This went hand in hand with a rise in employee engagement.
- We won awards, both regional and national.
- We saw a marked rise in profitability.
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