Scenario 1

“This has always been an excellent business. There have been very few changes in key personnel and yet long-term customers are telling me that our service levels are dropping. What do I need to do to respond? This is a service industry and the competitive challenges are enormous!”
(Divisional Director, Investment Bank)

An Excellence Audit survey that included executives, relationship managers and key back office professional staff showed a clear gulf in perceptions about what needed to change between key population groups.

The results showed that all three groups surveyed shared the same strong “Ambition” to develop and grow relationships with key customers.

The Relationship Managers took most of the heat from unhappy customers and blamed the decline in service standards on a perceived lack of commitment from their back office colleagues. They saw it as a “Talent” problem in the Back Office.

As a relatively small (in headcount terms) but highly profitable division of a global bank, the Division was increasingly reliant on the bank’s operating systems, which were less flexible than the local systems they had historically run. The daily grind of trying to service the customer accounts was dispiriting for the back office support teams. Consequently, they saw it as a mix of “Architecture” and “Talent” problems, but the “Talent” problem was with the Relationship Managers whose expectations were unrealistic!

The management team used the Excellence Audit results to expose the underlying issues and to establish an improvement agenda that would ease the growing frustration and tension between the three groups surveyed. Changes to the aspects of the case processing system and sequencing that they did control were made, and the cross-functional working now necessary has built stronger relationships across the Division. Reward and recognition was also modified to incentivise collaborative behaviour along the key customer value streams.

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