Culture: Insights & Implications for Performance

1. Culture: Insights & Implications for Performance By Jennie Douglas Wren Consulting LLC jennie@wrenconsulting.biz Business Blog: wrenconsulting.wordpress.com

2. “culture” defined… : the beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular society, group, place, or time : a particular society that has its own beliefs, ways of life, art, etc. : a way of thinking, behaving, or working that exists in a place or organization (such as a business) - Merriam-Webster Dictionary www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary

3. Case Study: Training RequestU.S.-based Telecom Company “We need to create an eLearning course to remind our off-shore customer care reps how to transfer escalated customers to supervisors. They’re taught to do this in New Hire (onboarding), but when they get on the floor they ignore the policy. This is hurting our customer satisfaction rankings, terribly! When it comes down to it, they have a hard time saying no to customers. It’s a cultural thing.”

5. Case Study: Training RequestU.S.-based Telecom Company “We need to create an eLearning course to remind our off-shore customer care reps how to transfer escalated customers to supervisors. They’re taught to do this in New Hire (onboarding), but when they get on the floor they ignore the policy. This is hurting our customer satisfaction rankings, terribly! When it comes down to it, they have a hard time saying no to customers. It’s a cultural thing.”

6. Q: What is the Context? • Organizations are systems • Organizations are processing systems • Organizations are adaptive systems • Jobs/roles and functions exist to support the processes of the organization • All performers are part of a Human Performance System • Management must keep the Organization System aligned • The Results Chain must link to a Critical Business Issue - Geary Rummler’s Anatomy of Performance

7. Alignment: Horizontally & Vertically

8. Case Study 2: Training RequestU.S.-based Telecom Company ”We need to train our off-shore customer care reps to do a better job of explaining billing, late payments and suspensions to our postpaid customers. They’re not doing it right; sometimes what they say doesn’t even make sense.”

11. What Jumps Out from the AOP? • Off-shore reps live in a completely different system: company, market, culture, economy, etc • From their client’s perspective, the CJI + CPI + CBI are still the same…and the customer’s are in the client’s market • Our challenge is to provide what these reps need to be able to effortlessly work virtually in our system.

12. What Did I Do? • Research marketplace context, and write survey to learn about these new hires: • Postpaid, prepaid, purchasing devices • How are they charged? Airtime, services, etc • How do people pay bills? Or purchase prepaid refills? • What happens if they’re late? • Banking, credit cards, checks, cash, mobile payments • Continue talking to everyone possible, asking questions & listening

13. What Did I Learn? Context Matters! • Off-shore reps tend to have way more experience than we do with things that are growing in importance to U.S. based telecom’s: eg. prepaid, mobile payments, social media, text messaging, etc • UN report: the developing world is ahead of the developed world now, in mobile communications! • We can do some things they won’t: eg. mail a check, need a credit card, care about our credit score • Our credit-based postpaid marketplace is foreign to these reps, they will not experience what we experience except when describing these items to customers. Neither will their coaches/supervisors.

15. “culture” defined… : the beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular society, group, place, or time : a particular society that has its own beliefs, ways of life, art, etc. : a way of thinking, behaving, or working that exists in a place or organization (such as a business) - Merriam-Webster Dictionary www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary