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Consulting
Click each header for program information.
3-day Workshop
“Smile” and “Customer Service” programs come and go, and if you are lucky, employee morale does not dip more after the last program dies a natural death. Too often, providing great service is a random act of kindness, propelled by a recent “flavor of the month” service program offered to employees. Great service should be business as usual. ILS believes that to help organizations become world-class service providers, those who provide great service consistently with all team members aligned to the service goals, they need a Master Plan. This Master Plan encompasses everything from hiring right-fit talent for your new service culture to orientation and training to ongoing monthly reward and recognition programs. This extensive workshop provides you with the Master Plan to achieve world-class service and dissects each of the pieces.
Integrated Loyalty Systems (ILS) will share how this approach has been adapted to many different organizations. The desired outcomes will target three primary areas: (1) understanding the key drivers of customer satisfaction and loyalty, (2) developing a blueprint for success, and (3) integrating the master plan throughout the entire organization.
1. Key Drivers of Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty
As an organization that serves multiple types of clientele, you already recognize and appreciate that each client deserves the same treatment, but should not be treated the same. ILS will help you discover how to look at your customers (both internal and external) with a 360-degree perspective. Through the use of our comprehensive process, your team members will learn how to map out the “touchpoints” of the entire customer experience. With this process, they will then strive to create “awesome arrivals” and “fond farewells” in every customer interaction and team member hand-off. The goal is to take mediocre, or even sub-par service to the level of excellent service.
For hospitals: Clinically we expect it, but can not evaluate it…most “wow” areas with the greatest opportunities are non-clinical areas.
2. Developing a Blueprint for Service Success
In every organization there are always a few super stars who stand out in the crowd by delivering consistent, superior service. In an effort to help differentiate you from your competition, ILS will help to develop an infrastructure to take these “magic moments” and turn them into “business as usual” rather than isolated, random acts of kindness. We will help create a service theme, service priorities, and operational behaviors customized to your organization, thereby enabling the entire workforce to consistently maintain and sustain world-class service.
3. Cultural Integration of the Blueprints for Service Success
Most customer service training programs available on the market today are often criticized as “smile” programs. They serve as reminders to front-line employees that they need to be courteous and attentive to their customer base, regardless of the organizational culture in which they are employed. Even the most successful of these types of programs lasts only as long as the employees who attended the training. Unfortunately, attrition guarantees that even a good program will fail in time with employee turnover.
ILS is committed to delivering cost effective training that will last long after program participants have moved up or moved on. We will accomplish this by helping you to not only improve service, but more importantly, incorporate best practices into the culture. It begins with a thorough analysis of the current service condition. It continues with a clear vision for service improvement followed by a comprehensive effort to align and integrate new systems and processes into everything you do. Naturally, the key to the success of this process lies in the personal involvement of those front-line service providers who are responsible for delivering on the corporate promise. Last, but not least, is the need for accountability. High performance must be encouraged and rewarded, while people displaying undesirable behavior must be held accountable at every level.
LEADERHIP PLANNING SESSION (Included)
Our team will meet with your leadership team members to review and discuss the overall approach for this service initiative. The meeting will serve to explain the steps of the process in more detail, manage expectations, discuss roles, review the timetable, and answer questions and concerns.
You will leave with…
- A Master Plan of 20-plus components that make up your new service culture
- A top ten list of priorities for implementation
- Benchmarking ideas from other world-class service providers within healthcare and outside
Outcomes of Creating Your Organization’s Service Master Plan
- Understanding the key drivers of customer satisfaction and loyalty
- The difference between a satisfied customer and a loyal customer
- Developing a blueprint for service success
- Integrating your blueprint/ plan throughout your organization
3-hour overview of the above “Creating your Organization’s Service Master Plan”
A 30,000-feet strategy session to look at all pieces necessary to create and sustain a world-class service culture. It will focus on prioritizing first things first so the implementation phase lays the foundation for a sustainable culture and not a program of the month. Ideally, it should be a 3-day workshop format, however, we can provide a 3-hour overview.
You will leave with…
- A Master Plan of 20-plus components that make up your new service culture.
- A top ten list of priorities for implementation.
- Benchmarking ideas from other world-class service providers.
3-day Workshop
Team ILS will conduct a three-day workshop with a task force of 20-60 key leaders, managers and influential front-line employees to develop a Blueprint for success. In this program, we will share how we’ve dissected the cultural DNA of Southwest Airlines and the Walt Disney Company. We will also show how our cultural master plan, made up of that same DNA, comes to life in a healthcare case study. Your team will develop your own blueprints for creating a world-class service culture consisting of a customized service theme, service priorities, service behaviors and a new service pledge that all must sign to commit to where the organization is now headed: service-focused. This will bridge the typical gap between an organization’s Mission, Vision and Values and the expected employee behaviors which will bring those values to life.
The Service Theme or Service Promise describes, as succinctly as possible, what you believe is the essence of why you are in business, whom you provide service to and how you deliver on the service promise. It helps to solidify to every team member “What’s my role in the overall customer experience?” This differentiates between employees’ job “tasks” and their “role” in creating the ideal patient/resident experience. It becomes the true north for all care givers’ actions.
One client, National Rehabilitation Hospital, has defined their service theme in five simple words: “We add life to years”. The most important word out of all five is “We”. From the outset, new employees in orientation quickly realize that everyone has a “role” or contribution in making that promise a reality. Whether you work in an area with direct customer interaction or in a support area, such as accounting or laundry…everyone is vital in creating the ideal patient experience.
Service Priorities are prioritized service standards. They help us create the ideal customer experience in all situations. It answers the question for all employees, “How should I handle this situation so I will deliver on our Service Promise, and what comes first: courtesy/ compassion, work efficiency, or my job tasks?” Service priorities are one of the main ingredients of creating a world-class service organization. Most organizations have standards or values, or both. Very few organizations prioritize their service standards and teach employees how to use them in everyday situations.
Service Behaviors communicate basic, global performance expectations, which create consistent delivery of service every time with every customer. In today’s marketplace, being greeted with eye contact and a smile can be defined as a world-class behavior because it’s so uncommon. Add that behavior with five or six more common behaviors and you are on the road to creating a world-class service organization. Of course, creating the behaviors is one thing, getting everyone at all levels to execute on those behaviors is another. Having no more than seven behaviors means that you can focus on just one per day. Simplicity is at the heart of getting everyone on the same page and orchestrating consistent behaviors and continuity of customer care.
The Service Pledge will become a new tradition for your organization and all new employees who join the organization. Some organizations make it a sheet of paper the employee signs at the end of new hire orientation as a token of their commitment (and added to their file) to what they have heard and the obligation that they must undertake to now walk the talk. Other organizations have created a large book where employees must sign their name into committing their pledge of upholding the company’s mission, vision and values. Either way, both new and current employees find this new tradition a welcome change from the status quo and look forward to seeing it come through fruition.
Outcomes
- An agreed upon Blueprint for all team members to start building their world-class service culture.
- A service promise that captures the essence of world-class service and continues to keep it aligned and focused with your organization’s Mission, Vision and Values.
- Service priorities that make up consistent “non-negotiables” for service delivery.
- Service and leadership behaviors to set the standards of acceptable behavior in the workplace. Global expectations, delivered locally.
Full-day Workshop
Many organizations think that just training their employees on customer service will change the entire organization forever. In most cases it just becomes the ‘program of the month’. To help sustain any service initiative or cultural change, a new language of service must become pervasive to keep employees in the mindset of service. Otherwise, we can all slip back into the work transaction mode, versus building lasting relationships. These customer service terms begin to integrate into everything you do, like the way you recruit, train, and interact with customers and each other. These terms will help motivate your team members to start thinking and acting more “service focused” simply by using these terms daily.
ILS will help your departments look at each customer interaction or “Touchpoint” and script out favorable and forbidden service language. The goal is to find ways to raise the satisfaction bar at each interaction opportunity.
For healthcare: we offer a comprehensive version specifically customized to the needs of patients and their caregivers.
Learning Objectives
- Learn how to communicate to a broader audience using more inclusive language.
- Explore scripting at Touchpoints to raise the satisfaction bar.
- Remove the jargon and the industry specific deciphering needed to translate your technical business language into usable, everyday language that all can understand.
- Gain insight and understanding of what you say and how you say it can affect how customers/ patients feel about their overall experience.
- Understand that at the end of the day what you say and how you said it will have a lasting impression on whomever you interact with.
- Create consistency and continuity through customer friendly language.
- Discover how language can change behavior, attention to detail and attitudes.
Ideally, a 3-day Workshop
At Integrated Loyalty Systems (ILS), we believe the goal, or end in mind for any new employee orientation process (NEO) is to affect the long term behavior of the audience attending the workshop. These desired behaviors should directly relate to your company’s mission, vision and values.
Done well, New Employee Orientation will, without a doubt, have a positive effect on customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, turnover, and ultimately, the bottom line. It is a major opportunity to make a positive first impression on all new employees, as well as to begin indoctrinating them into your company’s culture, including the focus on world-class customer service.
Purpose
The purpose of this workshop is to create a world-class new employee orientation (NEO) program for your organization. It will make a great first impression as a new team member. It will instill a sense of family and pride in new employees of their new employer, and help them become great ambassadors of your organization for patients and guests. It will generate excitement about working for your company; acclimate new hires to the foundations of your company’s culture; perpetuate your company’s heritage, traditions, values, traits, behaviors, and quality standards; and introduce them to regulations.
Process
We can do this together by benchmarking the training of other world-class organizations, by understanding what makes a good NEO and a bad one, by incorporating the NEO building blocks, and by defining and sharing your organization’s culture, vital signs, mission, vision, and NEO goals.
Payoff
Though there are many payoffs, the top measurable ones include: the cost of training more new hires will decrease as turnover decreases, since employees feel a sense of pride in their workplace. Employee satisfaction increases as employees feel a part of something bigger when they understand their “role in the overall experience”. This leads to increase patient satisfaction, as patients feel they are treated with respect, courtesy and dignity by knowledgeable, experienced and empathetic professionals. Revenue will increase, as employees will ensure world-class service for their patients and guests, who in turn tell their family and friends, who then return for future visits. Ultimately, a good new hire orientation will have a positive effect on the bottom line.
For healthcare: we offer a comprehensive version specifically customized to healthcare organizations. This is one of our specialties.
 Click here for our New Employee Orientation program sheet.
Does your recruitment advertising show what kind of person you are looking for? Do you have a pre-employment video, and if so, does it show what kind of behaviors you are looking for?
The right people will self-select for a right-fit organization. Team ILS will look at your entire selection process and look for ways to build consistency and continuity of the message. This process includes assessment and design and development for: recruitment, selection, orientation, and on-the-job training.
Full-day Workshop
In this full-day workshop, you will spend much of the morning focusing in on you as the leader. What does your daily walk look like, what steps do you go through in your daily routine to get the job done? What impact are you having on the people around you, the staff on the elevator, staff you work with? Does your daily walk mirror the way you want to do business? We will look for ways to close that gap and build a plan for you to lead by example.
In the afternoon, we will focus on the entire customer/ patient experience, mapping out each (major) step in the typical experience and looking for ways to move the customer satisfaction (or Press-Ganey patient satisfaction) scores up incrementally, one step at a time, one Touchpoint at a time.
Outcomes
- A cognizance of your leadership style and its impact on those who interact and observe you.
- A personal plan with specific goals on what you are going to do to personally create a better example of a leader of the way you want business and service done in your facility.
- A comfortability with the Touchpoint mapping tool and the ability to share that tool with your direct reports: integrating questions off the Press-Ganey survey right into the departmental TP Map and setting goals and steps to “STRIVE FOR 5’s”.
Today’s workplace reflects an extraordinarily diverse population within specialized departments, and very special roles within. This can create impenetrable silos, fiefdoms or kingdoms with their own rulers, rules and sub-cultures. Creating an overriding CREDO, SERVICE THEME or BATTLE CRY that all can rally behind is step one. The next step is how to localize it into sub-themes…where you create global consistency, but local hospitality and charm (based on its specialty).
Outcomes
- Create a global service theme (ie: We Create Magic; We Add Life to Years; All Hospitals are Not Alike)
- Localize it by departments (Valet Parking: Awesome Arrivals & Fond Farewells; Laundry: We Keep the Magic Squeaky Clean; Radiology: We Make Lasting Images; Birthing: We Make New Beginnings)
If physical architecture is the skeleton and skin of the organization, then the human architecture is the heart and soul of the organization. Many organizations intuitively know what their core reason for being is and how to go about it; that is really the heart of the organization. The brain of the organization is a systematic, linear approach to processes and systems that define, delineate, and integrate the pieces necessary to provide consistency and continuity. Bridging the gap between the brain and the heart is the difference between good to great. For example, the mission, vision and values the organization holds is part of the heart (what we believe in, who we want to be). But the brain needs to internalize this heart-felt belief system into daily action (what do you want me to specifically do/say that makes the mission, vision and values come to life?).
Outcomes
- Link the global organizational mission, vision, values, service themes and service standards to service behaviors.
- Localize the behaviors into specific, customized departmental actions.
- Explore localized (by department) scripting at Touchpoints to raise the satisfaction bar.
- Remove the jargon and the industry specific deciphering needed to translate your technical business language into usable, everyday language that all can understand.
The key to implementing and sustaining a Service Excellence culture is leadership's ability to lead it. In this phase of the engagement, we will articulate leadership's role in:
- Defining the message
- Cascading the message throughout the organization
- Walking the talk
- Rewarding and recognizing those who walk the talk
- Building accountability metrics for those who do not
- Building a Leadership Development Institute to constantly train and motivate on it
- And honing their skills in the art of storytelling
Many world-class service providers recognize that their physical architecture has to integrate with their human architecture to enable world-class care. In this program, we will cover the following elements that can be enhancers or detractors for your staff to deliver a fluid patient-centered experience. The physical layout of a hospital can greatly impact the customer's impression, including the campus layout; parking lot layout; access doors; cafeteria or food centers; telephones, restrooms and water fountains; guest relations desk; the main entrance; history wall; signage (highway, campus, parking), main entrance, way-finding, elevators, waiting rooms.
Physical architecture can enable or disable fluid handoffs between departments. Pay attention to the little details, because everything speaks.
Click here for our architecture brochure.
Service Excellence is not a program or an initiative, it is a way of life. Taking your expectations, behaviors, and training programs and integrating and hardwiring them into everything you do is the heart of this engagement.
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