“Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality…”. Charles Eames, Visionary Designer (1907-1978)
Connecting effectively with clients and colleagues is central to delivering both the outcomes they want and, as a result, the value which organisations need to create. Leaders have a responsibility to their organisations - to deliver the best possible outcomes from each connection relevant to their role. Ideally, differences (diversity) would not prevent us from achieving that. For teachers with diverse students, hotel staff with diverse guests, doctors with diverse patients or leaders with diverse team members – the outcomes (learning, repeat visits, recovery or engagement) should be consistently good. In reality we know that assumptions, attitudes and behaviours triggered by differences get in the way. There is nearly always a connection challenge for individuals and organisations and sometimes a price to pay in terms of customer satisfaction.
When was the last time, even in your mind’s eye, that you walked alongside a customer from their first touch with your organisation to their last? Are you confident that the impression they form of your business will be equally positive, regardless of who they are? Taking the walk right through to the last touch is important. In a workshop with a utility company someone shared a story of a very successful marketing campaign where a multi-lingual door-to-door sales team was very successful in signing potential new customers. Those customers then had to connect with call centre staff to verify the contract. Because the call centre was not equipped with the same language skills some potential customers “pulled the plug” and potential revenues were lost.
In some ways clients, guests or patients are like travellers who want to plug into your power supply – in what may be new territory. How much of a challenge do they face? Do you have one way of marketing products and offering services? Are you effectively offering a single type of socket where some customers are able to plug in but other potentially valuable clients are left disconnected? One practical example is the move to provide more and more services online. We know that this can work and is welcomed by many people. We also know that this kind of connection is not attractive to some potentially important groups of customers. This has been seen, for instance, in reponses to provision of online financial services in India.
For me, inclusive leaders and organisations are like universal adapters. Driven by the outcome they need to achieve for all kinds of people they find a way to create a high quality connection with as many of them as possible.
In this context Inclusion with a Purpose requires us to start thinking about the connections we and our organisations need:
Q. Have we walked (recently) through the journey a customer, client or new recruit makes with us? Have we identified the places where diversity might impact the quality of the connection we make with them? Did we ask for insights from a diverse group of people?
Q. Have we analysed data such as brand awareness / customer satisfaction/ staff engagement scores by demographic group – at the level of detail to create knowledge we can really act on?
Q. Is everyone who is connecting with our clients aware of how their own biases and limiting assumptions may affect the way they provide our service? Have we created in them the ability to prevent bias turning into inconsistent levels of service and satisfaction?
No comments:
Post a Comment