Last month, the Human Resources Officer at the Chartered Quality Institute got in touch: “At the CQI, we often host Lunch and Learn events. These events are well attended by all of our employees. They are aimed to shed the light on the day in the life of a Quality Professional. Not every one comes from a Quality background, so helping everyone understand how their work benefit the Quality Professionals of the world would be great. Would you be interested in sharing your story with them?”
Now lets take a minute here and contemplate the powerful approach Human Resources have at the institute. Helping employees understand how their work contribute and benefit the lives of customers is a very empowering and engaging strategic approach.
In companies where employees fully understand the impact of their duties, the level of engagement, customer service and efficiency tends to be high. If employees believe in what they do, the result is no doubt brilliant.
The question from the HR at the CQI was very humbling. I humbly accepted the offer. The brief was simple:
- Background
- Quality Career
- What my day to day looks like
- How the CQI has helped me
Of course, I could have abided by the script. I decided that to better engage with my audience that I must deliver something that would benefit them.
To simplify Quality approach, referring to customer experience is always a winning approach in my opinion. Everyone is a customer and interacts with out people one way or another. So having a tip on how to handle difficult situations, I thought, would be a good approach.
Often, we get involved in obstacles and difficult situations that might appear to be pressing. As humans we have a choice to either engage in a subjective matter, or take a step back and address the situation objectively. But what would it take to do so?
During the session we covered a simple approach to handle difficult situations when customers complain or when colleagues are dissatisfied with something. After all there are several studies that confirms when customer experience is positive organisation grow. American Express states that 58% of customers are willing to spend more money on a new brand for a better experience. 1st Financial Training services mentions 91% of unhappy customers vote with their feet and never come back.
Apply the above scenarios to internal customers. Colleagues would not want to work with someone who is not providing a good customer experience. When collaboration is hindered, productivity and efficiency is compromised.
So why Customer Experience for Quality professionals?
For 2 simple reasons (and I say simple loosely):
Reason one:
Applying an objective approach to approach problems and deliver a good customer experience can also be applied to a broken process. The better the process, the more assurance it will be used.
Reason Two:
The Quality Professionals are faced with a strong perception that they police around in companies. This can only be changed through excessive collaboration.
This is exactly what the Chartered Quality Institute is doing. Raising the bar for all Quality Professionals around the world through a very relevant and carefully thought competency framework: Leadership, Assurance, Governance, Improvement, in a defined context.
The session was well received at the CQI and I was not only honoured to be invited to speak, I also learnt considering this is my first “public” speaking event.
I have written a blog about the competency framework last year here.
The Project EDIT 