Analyze ideas
So now you have a goal and a bunch of ideas about how to get there. Your job is to align the two so you can set a strategy that will fulfill your purpose and your mission.
After a client conference or focus group, Allen’s biweekly operations meeting turns from its normal tactical agenda to a strategic one.
“We talk about, ‘Here’s what our clients are telling us. What does it mean, and what should we do about it?’” he says.
Usually, clients first respond to their personal experience with your company, so you have to first address the specific instances that stick in their mind.
When you look at examples that closely, you can determine where you’re not meeting their needs — and whether people, processes or products are causing the gap.
“If the client has been critical of our performance, we identify the players involved to see if there is a pattern that needs to be addressed,” Allen says. “We quickly provide training that, hopefully, will correct the problem going forward. We report back to the client to let them know that we have addressed the problem.
“If the client has made a suggestion or complained about something with broader implications, we get the operations team together to focus on the issues rather than the people. We lay out the problem, give everyone a chance to weigh in [and] try to narrow the discussion down to specific action items.”
Addressing issues individually is pretty basic customer service. It becomes strategy, though, when you weigh all of those individual encounters together to make bigger moves that affect more customers.
Look at how many clients are saying the same things and how one person’s suggestion may benefit someone else. But remember, high demand alone doesn’t dictate what you should do.
“Some of the feedback we get is isolated,” Allen says. “It’s really particular to a certain client. We may address it at that client level but don’t necessarily adopt it for everything we do for all of our clients. … We look at the soundness and practicality of an idea and client profitability when determining what to roll out widely or on a case-by-case basis.”
First, ideas should pass through the filter of your purpose. Because it sets the framework of what your company does best and what you consider success, your purpose also defines which ideas you should pursue.
“If we’re asked by a client or even lots of clients to do something and it makes sense, it’s a legitimate business need, but we determine that we’re not good at it, then we won’t do it,” Allen says. “Or if there’s things that we may be good at, but there’s other things that we like to emphasize because they’re really more core to our product offering, then we’ll put those things on the back burner and focus initially on doing what we currently do better. We don’t want to start providing additional services that stretch our resources and our talent until we’re doing a phenomenal job with what we’re already tasked to do.”
For example, G&A is striving for a consistent customer service score of 9 or 10 to prove it has mastered its core area before tackling more. The company is at an 8.9 — and still focusing on its core services.
But client ideas also have to pass the test of your mission statement.
“People have made suggestions that perhaps we ought to help businesses borrow money so that they can grow their business,” Allen says. “That fits into the purpose statement, because one of the things we’re trying to do is help small businesses grow their business, and of course, it takes capital to do that.
“But helping people borrow money is a little different than our core HR focus. While it’s consistent with our purpose, it’s not consistent with our core product offering. Anything that we do to fulfill our purpose also has to fit within our mission statement, and our mission statement says that we’re going to be a professional employer organization, not a lending institution.”
Running ideas through that wringer helps Allen match his clients’ needs with his company’s capacity, making both sides successful.
“We know what we’re good at. We know what we’re not good at,” he says. “If there’s a suggestion made that doesn’t fit within that three-pronged purpose statement, we just won’t embrace it.”
