How to take customer satisfaction from 8% to 70% in 18 months

In 2010, Specsavers’ finance shared services measured their customer satisfaction and found it was at an average of 8% and staff engagement was at 51%. However they were able to turn it around and increase those figures to 70% and 76% respectively in just 18 months.

At our Source to Settle as a Service conference this June, Specsavers shared their key success factors for becoming an award winning shared services centre, and how the embedding of a new cultural set-up has set the shared services organisation, and the business for growth.

Employee engagement in shared services - why it matters

Because shared services are often removed from the business and the people they support, a lack of employee engagement is a common problem for finance shared services.

Good levels of customer service only happen when your employees care about customer service. Employees who are not engaged, and with low morale are much less likely to provide the best quality service they can. But how do you recognize low morale? If you aren’t measuring through surveys, signs of low morale include:

• An us vs. them environment where senior management isn’t trusted and employees don’t feel they have a voice or their concerns are addressed
• A lack of delivery and poor customer satisfaction. If the job isn’t getting done to the standard you require, there are several factors at play. It might be a lack of resource, it might be a lack of training, or it might be a lack of motivation and incentive and employees that don’t feel motivated to deliver top quality results
• On the other side of the coin, high levels of engagement and enablement lead to greater employee productivity, more loyal customers, and stronger financial performance.

How do you start to engage employees?

Engage your employees. What does this mean? It’s as simple as talking to your employees. Daniel Brindley, FSSC Accounts Payable Manager at Specsavers said  “Take time to discuss vision, values, survey results and context of any other business initiatives.”  

If you don’t have enough reasons to talk to your employees, he outlined some of the benefits of engaging employees with your survey and results:

• When you talk openly about survey results with employees it helps develop relationships and trust between managers and staff.
• The conversation will help reinforce your commitment to continuous improvement.
• Open and honest conversations helps builds buy-in and commitment to actions
• Employees know it was worth giving their feedback. One of the problems causing low morale is that employees don’t feel like they are being listened to or their issues are being addressed. If you are looking at survey results with them, they know you are on the case.
• They will be motivated to complete the survey next time because they see that it makes a real difference

Other tools Specsavers used:

• They introduced new leadership who focussed on improving customer satisfaction
• They have “Specsavers Academy” for professional development which offers a variety of in-house training programmes and we also have strong links with universities and professional governing bodies.
• They encourage internal promotions and clearly show career progression and promote from within, where possible.

Employee engagement is not a one off exercise

If you want to keep your employees engaged, you need to keep at it. Just like any relationship, relationships with your employees take work. They need to know you are listening, they need room to grow and you need to respond to what you hear. The result will be better service and a nicer place to work, so the reward is worth effort.