by Robin Dicks | Jun 30, 2023 | Robin's Blog
Normally, of course I’d say yes. However… In my (driving) life I’ve had more cars from one marque/brand than any other – five in fact. Bit of an advocate really. Until a recent experience. Won’t bore you with the detail, but for the best part of 2 months I was unable to use the car for anything more than a short trip. It’s cost me a fair bit, and mistakes at the dealer, misdiagnosis of the fault, and delay in getting parts have made me, to use a technical term, grumpy. The brand has sent me an online survey after each experience at the dealer. The emails are headed “we care about you.” They’ve also called to ask for my feedback. So far so good. I’ve responded to the survey giving pretty poor scores and explaining my experience, and spent 10-15 minutes answering a call (in a separate process) giving more detail, and noting the impact on how I felt about the brand. I said that my faith in the brand had been shaken and the person on the phone promised to escalate it, and promised a customer services person would call me back. One month later, guess what has happened. Nothing. This strikes me as a situation where ‘doing the process’ – i.e. getting the feedback, getting some scores, ticking the boxes – is seen as achieving the aim. But the whole point is to enable you to resolve customer issues. They have signally failed to do that. Nobody is accountable for the follow-up. So, its worth just thinking again about ‘how do we USE the information we...
by Robin Dicks | Jan 10, 2023 | Robin's Blog, Uncategorized
The events of the last few years have made many of us think about improving work-life balance and our wellbeing. Some research we did last year flagged up the widespread risk of ‘burn-out’ amongst staff in professional services. So this link includes our thoughts on some New Year resolutions worth considering for those managing firms or wanting to reduce the risk of...
by Robin Dicks | May 27, 2020 | Robin's Blog
A couple of weeks ago our car – probably like many others in the last few weeks – had a flat battery. The thing about modern cars is it’s a lot more complicated than it used to be, you can’t just stick jump leads on any more. In the end it necessitated two different people from two different organisations coming out. I’ve no idea which one was more technically adept, as I struggle to tell the difference between a spark plug and an exhaust pipe. But one guy coughed into open air, and kept rubbing this nose, and was pretty blasé about social distancing. The other had gloves, had clearly sanitised stuff, was respectful of distance, and had clearly thought how to communicate and show me how to do stuff, again at a distance. Who do you think I’d use again? It’s a blunt example, but enabling customers to feel safe and secure in dealing with you is going to be a big deal for a...
by Robin Dicks | May 14, 2020 | Robin's Blog, Uncategorized
I’m not going to say “this is a challenging time”. There’s no need to replay all that. You already know. What’s more important is that some of the unknowns may derail your competitive ability to retain work and clients over the next few months. I’ve written about this at more length elsewhere (see here) But some of the key bits are ensuring that not only do you know what your clients want, but you understand how emotionally capable staff – and their line managers – are to deliver it. That requires finding out, in a sensitive, and risk-free way. You can’t be resilient if you don’t know what you need to do to create that...
by Robin Dicks | Mar 24, 2020 | Robin's Blog
It feels right to talk about something more “normal” for the moment. We did an interesting project a few months ago for a firm which was keen to understand the truth about how its capability was perceived vs. competitors, and indeed if it could successfully differentiate itself. From speaking to their clients and key opinion formers across their high priority sectors, it was clear that the activities of their competitors had created a gap. The firm in question just needed to more clearly communicate its capability and ensure that its “brand” resonated more clearly, though key people confidently delivering all the elements of a trusted advisor. They now have a clear map and focus to do this, and I’m sure they will...
by Robin Dicks | Mar 13, 2020 | Robin's Blog
Thriving recently undertook a thought leadership programme for a major law firm. We found that some of the characteristics of the successful in-house legal team of the future included flexibility, clear goals, leadership and values, effective stakeholder and board management – and the ability to respond rapidly to the unexpected. That seems even more significant now. Contact me if you’d like to chat about thought...
