Growing up is a good feeling ...

In 1999 when I was writing my business plan for setting up an integrated contact center, offering offshore services, I realized the product offering was so strong that for the client to say No was remote. Technology required no innovation and process would be client led.

Where we could make or break was in People. Growth would be explosive and talent constrained. Suddenly everything changed, in my marketing plan; attracting and retaining talent was the focus. They were people employed by us, but they will have many more opportunities to choose from. Really speaking they were my customers, my business depended on them. In came the Internal Customer Satisfaction (ICS) function alongside operations, training, technology and finance & administration. The big challenge was finding two right people who would understand the concept thoroughly, one would lead the ICS function the other the operations. I met many professionals but I was looking for the person. I finally found the two people, I believed could. Together we evolved the philosophy of Internal Customer Satisfaction to actionable activity. We ensured every leader understood that their interaction with their people was a moment of truth that both must cherish. While getting on board a prospective customer that would be their first moment of truth; great care was taken to ensure the experience was cherished and that nobody felt he wasted an extra minute at our offices

Training our customer interaction team was an enriching experience; the leadership team reviewed it every week with the trainees. I remember the first review; when we walked in, the training room was short of chairs for us, somebody ran out to get a few more chairs. Spontaneously, our head of ICS settled down on the floor, he was followed by the operations head and before I knew all of us were down on the floor and the chairs out of the room. Needless to say the discussion that ensued was at a different plane; we went there with a plan, when we were done; the trainees believed it was theirs. I felt achieved. I knew now that I had the two right people

The real challenge would be when the trainees hit the floor and the operations rolled, this is when we would get measured, we needed the Extra Value Proposition (EVP) for our internal customers, that ensured we added value to the customer and made their engagement with us more meaningful. That in the future would be our edge. However, it could be easily copied, it did get copied and we are flattered. The challenge is to be close to your customer, know as much as you can about him and his needs and fulfill them consistently in a dynamic environment. The Beanpod brings this and learning from other organizations that I have worked with, to add value to yours.    

- K K Cariapa -founder developer The Beanpod