Conference

As a world-leader in elite sport, Sir Clive Woodward has demonstrated his ability to build high-performance teams that consistently perform under pressure and deliver results.

Through extensive experience in both the sporting and business worlds, Sir Clive has an unique perspective on what inspires individuals and organisations to excel. To outclass the competition requires smart leadership, the ability to make change happen and, above all, the ability to develop talent. 

As Sir Clive explains, “It’s not only about skills. It’s about attitude and the effect on the team. One wrong team member can sap all of the energy from the group.”

In this revealing keynote presentation, Sir Clive will share his winning strategies but demonstrate that to deliver sustainable success, talent alone is not enough.

The only sustainable form of leadership is thought leadership. The old question was "What business are we in?" The new questions is "What ideas do we stand for?"

The future belongs to those who create a compelling cause and leaders who leave behind marks and not just dust. Companies will no longer dominate their markets by playing it safe but by playing it smart. It is about defying conventional wisdom and building great organisations by bringing out the best in everyone.

Two provocative and inspiring voices on management and innovation, Anja Foerster and Peter Kreuz, will leave the audience with new, exciting and deeply relevant ways to think about their companies, their leadership strategies and their own careers.

It is impossible for management to have all the answers. Engagement needs to radiate from the circle to the core. You need to mobilise the knowledge of the “eyes and ears” of your workforce to innovate and grow. Soliciting and listening to employees' feedback and acting collaboratively on their suggestions will result in a workforce that feels valued, engaged and loyal. By tapping into their collective zeitgeist you will find out how to build alignment, trust and competitive advantage.

Our speakers in this session will share their story of how they have successfully engaged their workforce and how this has helped them grow their people and grow their business.

Rob Hawthorn will demonstrate how their employee engagement strategy has helped Barclays Commercial Bank achieve business success. The emphasis for us is all about creating the right climate where staff feel encouraged to actively engage in real two way communications with senior managers and making them feel their inputs are valued by acting on them to improve what we do. This open culture is supported by a holistic programme of looking after employee’s well-being and recognising their achievements. The benefits of following this strategy speak for themselves with Barclays
consistently exceeding industry benchmarks and winning numerous awards for delivering excellence.

Harnessing the power of advocacy has enabled Virgin Media to build an environment where employees feel valued and inspired to deliver an excellent customer experience. Despite transformational changes to the business over the past few years, the business has achieved an open and honest culture where employees feel able to make a difference and safe to challenge. This positive culture has enabled the business to make further difficult decisions with full support from the workforce while continuing to build advocacy and creating a place where people love to work.

It is now widely accepted that there are clear and causal links between the quality of an organisation’s customer service (including the sales experience) and the consequential customer advocacy, loyalty and LTV generated, which directly impacts the long-term financial performance of a business. However, in a world where most contact centres are “me too” operations, the best these organisations can hope for is a mere fractional tactical advantage from their contact centre.

In this Workshop we will explore how a contact centre operation can provide a strategic competitive advantage by:

• Identifying the components of the contact centre experience that matter to customers

• Focusing on the elements that make for great customer experiences

• Designing processes and systems that can routinely deliver exceptional experiences

• Selecting, training and managing agents so that they can deliver these outstanding experiences

The concept of customer experience was first introduced by Pine & Gilmore in their 1998 Harvard Business Review article. They believe that “successful businesses influence people through engaging, authentic experiences that render personal value”. Thompson & Kolsky said that “an experience is defined as the sum total of conscious events and as such, a supplier cannot avoid creating an experience every time it interacts with a customer”.

So how come this simple and intuitively obvious idea ended up meaning an organisation has to invest millions of pounds in technological solutions to deliver it? Ten years after a magazine article spawned an entire industry is it time to rethink our customer experience strategies? Together we will discuss:

• The key drivers of the customer experience

• What does a great customer experience feel like, who is getting it right and why?

• How should we measure the customer experience

• Is customer experience a theory, a process or a tangible asset to the brand?

The amount of information we are able to measure has never been greater. Much of it provides you with a snapshot of your operational activities such as employee productivity, AHT, employment engagement, call waiting time and first call resolution. But do these operational measures provide you with the information you need to manage and improve repeat purchasing, and profitability through increased customer satisfaction?

For many businesses the answer is “no” because they are unsure which operational activities are truly key or - in many instances – the best way to set about measuring them.

Together in this workshop we will explore how we can build models which will:

• Help you to clearly visualise and measure your key value chain: Operational activities -> Service quality -> Key performance drivers -> Business results

• Guide development of operational processes which consistently deliver the service quality you need to drive business results

• Allow you to demonstrate the business value added by your contact centre

• Assist you in selecting technologies which are more likely to increase customer satisfaction and profitability

Today we are operating in a tough business environment with intense competition and strategies designed for survival rather than performance. All of which do not help operational managers deliver on the day-to-day and hinder their ability to implement change. Also too frequently we find that the immediate daily pressures can compromise the people’s ability to achieve changes that their organisation requires to thrive and grow.We need a different approach going forward one starting from a view of what “business outcomes” we seek to achieve which can help an operation achieve the goals of both an operational unit and the organisation as a whole. Together we will explore:

• Can we design a “mind-map” to help understand the implications of driving transformed business outcomes?

• Is a “mind-map” a useful tool to help the whole organisation understand what needs to be done to achieve changed outcomes?

• What would a change mind-map look like that included:
- HR
- IT
- Planning
- Reporting and measurement (KPIs/Standards of Performance)
- Internal communications

Companies spend a great deal of time and effort creating and implementing customer management strategies, yet customers do not wish to feel that they are being managed. Customers want to be in control and choose both how and when to interact with companies on their terms. Companies that are geared to offer customers real choice will have significant advantages over their competitors in today’s highly volatile market place. In the light of this reality, what role can self service play in giving customers maximum choice? This workshop will specifically address the following questions:

• If self service self defeating?

• How should a self service strategy be planned and implemented?

• Why do some self service strategies fail and how can I tell if mine is one of them?

• How can I ensure our self service strategy succeeds?

We all know that customer-handling processes are increasingly becoming hygiene factors and are only really of concern to the customer when they are missing. This has led to a focusing on staff behaviour that delivers an effective transaction which, for the customer, is increasingly seen as simply ‘getting the job done’ – The problem is that this strategy doesn’t drive the customer behaviour needed for growth.

In this workshop, we will explore moving beyond delivering competent transactions to ‘maximising the moment’ which will
increase the chances that customers will buy more and stay longer.  We will discuss:

• Why personalised experiences are what customers truly value

• Ways staff can earn the right to build relationships

• Ideas for aligning input measures to drive these behaviours in customer-facing staff

• How to align output measures to track the impact on the customer

This think tank will explore the role that the contact centre can and should play in your organisation, challenging the dichotomy which sees contact centres as either cost or profit centres.We will explore what we mean by a value centre; examine how customers want to communicate with organisations, the experiences that deliver value to them, and the kinds of technologies that are available to enable these interactions.

We are in a period where we can potentially radically re-configure and re-create the customer’s contact centre experience. This think tank will challenge and encourage you to share your ideas not only about what it is possible to do, but also about what it is worth doing.

To deliver an excellent customer experience employees must be happy, motivated and fully engaged but the role and work of a front line contact centre employee can often be repetitive, stressful and unrewarding. So how can those responsible for contact centre staff ensure that their employees enjoy coming to work and strive every day to deliver excellent customer experience and improved customer relationships.

In this Think Tank we will discuss and explore in detail the ways in which contact centre management can enrich the role of front line contact centre staff, in order to maximise employee engagement and motivation and harness the positive energy created to transform your customer experience.

What does “optimising performance” mean in against a background of falls in income, margins and profits? It is likely to vary between organisations due to their differing strategies, business models, competitive and recessionary pressures. One thing for sure is that there will be increasing pressure to cut costs and reduce investment.

This think tank will use as its basis, the outputs and views of a group of senior operational managers taken towards the end of 2008, and will seek to help set priorities and validate what alternative approaches might be adopted to meet the challenges we face.With the ultimate aim of using the recession to re-invigorate our operations and deliver value back to our organisations.

Together we will look at developing “business outcomes” that are likely to help us to become leaner and more effective and what actions are needed to ensure we achieve this.

Ask anyone working in Marketing how many revisions, corrections and amendments they will ask their ad agency to make to copy before it goes to print. My experience suggests you’re likely to get a number between 6 and 24. Then ask them how much thought they have given into who is going to handle the response to that ad and you’re likely to get a few blank looks!

Contact centres have grown up, they have become guardians of the customer experience and a key driver of customer loyalty – according to Jessica Debor "Loyalty is now driven primarily by a company's interaction with its customers and how well it delivers on their wants and needs." Yet contact centres perceived value to the organisation hasn’t progressed in line with the changes us “insiders” have lived through. This think tank will explore how you can identify ‘value’ in your Contact Centre and develop actionable strategies within your organisation to communicate this to overcome outmoded prejudices and perceptions.

Delivering a better customer experience is the goal of many organisations but, all too often, it manifests itself as a tactical initiative - set in a vacuum - rather than being grounded in the overall purpose of the business. Using the voice of the customer to facilitate change provides a sense of purpose and clarity that can galvanise the organisation and lead to a fundamental change in the customer experience that delivers bottom-line results.

This think tank will explore how the voice of the customer can be used to align organisations and create a climate where change is possible leading to operational improvements. You will be encouraged to share your experiences of what makes customer-focused change programmes both successful and sustainable. You will leave with several ideas for engaging management, engaging staff and creating the conditions in an organisation necessary to support change and
deliver results.

How often have we heard the same tired clichés such as: “the customer is always right”; “it’s just about giving them exactly what they want”; “it’s about smiling at people!”; “you just need to appear to be friendly!”; “you need to treat them all the same way!” and my personal favourite “just about anyone can do it!”. Quite frankly they are all WRONG!! If these myths were right and if it was that easy maybe more organisations would do it - but it isn’t, which is why most give up because it simply doesn’t work. Together in this think tank we will explore why delivering consistent, worldclass customer service takes dedication, listening hard, the full involvement of everyone, planning, belief, knowledge, and above all the right people & processes.

With one in six employees now suffering from stress related mental health issues, such as anxiety or depression, this workshop will review the latest research findings and government recommendations on their prevention and treatment. Dr Wolfgang Seidl will provide clinical insight and practical advice on the physiology of stress, what to do when stress becomes a performance management issue, why some people are more resilient than others and what HR can do to both rehabilitate absent employees and increase the ability of all workers to remain healthy under pressure.

Personal branding is now an essential tool for thriving in the new world of work. The best way to achieve your professional goals and surpass the competition is to differentiate yourself. But making an immediate and impressive impact can often be difficult to do, requiring a tricky combination of communication, presentation, assertiveness and influencing skills. This interactive workshop will show delegates how to make the impact they want and set themselves apart from their peers.

At one time or another we have all seen the extraordinary in the ordinary, with our minds acknowledging alternative attitudes or viewpoints. But how can this change in mental outlook be applied to day-to-day life to boost creativity and innovation? This workshop will demonstrate that we all have the ability to break away from the predictable, be more creative and show how it can applied to the benefit of both our professional and personal lives.

In all aspects of our lives there are things we fear and feel uncomfortable doing because we don't like stepping out of our comfort zone, but understanding how to push yourself beyond your fears and outside the comfortable security of your everyday life is as necessary as it is difficult. In this workshop delegates will learn where their comfort boundaries lie and how to push them in order to embrace new ideas and challenges.