GBS and shared services organisations have been focusing their delivery on efficiency and effectiveness for decades. Whilst these areas remain important, the next level of GBS maturity and value delivery will be redefined and driven by experience.

In this blog, we summarise insights from Sanjay Patel, SVP and Global Head of Takeda Business Solutions (TBS), Richard Williams, CFO, VP Strategy & Transformation at Mars Global Services and Phil Priest, Senior Vice President Global Business Services at Smith & Nephew, at this year’s SSOW Europe 2022, on how to pivot their strategy and ensure that experience is the focal point of their GBS narrative.

What does customer experience mean to you, and how do you organise your efforts?

Sanjay explained that their aspiration is about delivering an exceptional experience so that their colleagues feel confident and supported. It is a commitment to their people, and anyone who engages or interacts with them, such as their employees, suppliers, vendors, customers, and stakeholders, to ensure that they all have a consistent experience when interacting with TBS. He added that they have appointed a Head of People Experience and a dedicated team within TBS, to help drive the shift in culture, mindset, behaviours, tools, and technologies. The establishment of a dedicated team also enabled them to develop the required capabilities and deliver relevant training across the enterprise.

Richard shared that Mars has begun their journey of being experience-led for end-to-end solutions and has brought in a team to focus on this. In addition, they are aiming to evolve Global Process Owners (GPOs) to Global Experience Owners (GXOs), to analyse processes, controls, best practice and drive experience.

Phil described that one of the first things they did was ask for the service management part of their IT organisation to become one of the fledgling parts of GBS, to help people understand service management. He added that they combined service management and customer experience to create an avenue through their “Click Call Chat Talk” channels. These channels aim to help them connect and interact with their customers, to ensure they have a great experience.

How do you know you are giving a good customer experience?

Phil disclosed that they use Service Level Agreement (SLA), and a Net Promotor Score (NPS) to measure experience. For example, when someone asks for a resolution they ask, “How easy was that for you?”. When they provide the resolution they ask, “Did the resolution solve your problem?”. Finally, when the ticket is closed, they perform a post-closure survey where they ask, “Would you recommend us to your colleagues?” They also perform an annual survey, which gives them an average NPS of 75 across their services.

The key to harness data is by using a NPS, according to Richard. Then to match this with the reality, by signposting when an individual should start the journey. Similarly, they use end-of-journey recognitions, which Richard argued are statistically relevant, as well as leading KPIs to indicate what that experience is.

At Takeda, they do not use an SLA or NPS. Instead, they rely on enterprise-wide surveys, such as their annual employee experience survey. They then filter this feedback into functions, to give them a better sense of where the organisation is positioned, how their employees feel about it, and what action they should take to drive improvements. In addition, to embed experience within their organisation, they conduct monthly Governance Forums and Solutions Review Boards. These sessions allow leadership teams to directly engage with colleagues from across the various business units and to gather real-time feedback on how functions in the business are operating.

What advice would you give someone who is looking to improve their customer experience?

Sanjay identified five top tips for customer experience:

1. Do not implement customer/people/employee experience for the sake of implementing it. This needs to be pervasive in your entire organisation.

2. Have a well-defined, structured, clear vision or roadmap of how your organisation will operate and link this to the company’s imperatives.

3. Share success stories and examples of situations where things have not gone to plan, so you can learn from them.

4. Invest in your people’s capabilities, because it requires everyone in the organisation to act and perform consistently to deliver an exceptional experience.

5. Recognise and reward the people who go above and beyond to deliver an exceptional experience.

Richard’s key piece of advice was to invest in and drive an emotional mindset capability.

Finally, Phil detailed that it is vital to ask the following questions: “What are your critical to customer attributes?”, as they might differ by service, persona or you might serve external customers. “How are you segmenting and organising for the critical customer attributes?” For example, do you have a team that is dedicated to improving the experience your employees, customers or stakeholders receive from your GBS? Employee experience is critical within GBS. Therefore, you need to think about whether your employees are receiving a good experience, and how you organise, structure, and measure this experience.

Want to learn more about how you can take your GBS to the next level with experience management?

Join the world’s industry experts on 17 – 19 October 2022 in London, UK to discover how you can transform your GBS and position your company for success at SSOW Europe Autumn 2022.

View the 2022 agenda here!

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