CLIENT PROJECTS
Our focus in each of these cases is to distill client issues into a summary challenge, to bring ideas and vision to solve those challenges and to focus on results meaningful to our individual client and the firm as a whole.
STRATEGY & SOURCING FOR A TELECOMS COMPANY
Challenge
This company provides low cost mobile telecoms to the mass audience, many of whom may be lower than average income or even un-banked. Over time they had grown a set of processes and systems more attuned to a much larger company with a wider range of customers. It was clearly time to slim down to the basics in customer care, marketing, IT, but yet still provide a great customer experience which suited the lifestyle of the consumers served.
Idea
Everyone deserves a great customer experience, but answering every call does not necessarily mean great care and high satisfaction. Often it's better to automate and move to a cleaner model. If you can't automate, by all means outsource to a lower cost location, but ensure that the metrics are in place to drive the right behaviours against strategy. Such a model will require investment, but every investment in stores, care channels, technology is now focused on reducing cost to serve and improving engagement
Result
Removed 25% of cost in customer care, marketing, merchandising & printing, IT and network operations | Increase in customer satisfaction by 20% in 1 year as measured through Net Promoter Score | No change in rate of net adds
CUSTOMER SERVICE FOR THEME PARK COMPANY
Challenge
This company operates theme parks on a global basis and prides itself on superior customer experience based on highly knowledgeable staff. As the knowledge of the staff has dwindled with turnover and the increased digital interactivity of the elements within the theme parks, staff customer service skills for certain interactions has also dwindled. Customer preferences and requirements have also changed. Our mission was to understand these changes and to recommend how customer service could be improved.
Idea
Customer Service is always a delicate balance between cost and value. On the one hand, consumers have already bought your product or service; on the other service is almost always a key decision point in re-purchase of the product or service. Understanding which interactions are churn moments and which are less likely to result in churn is critical to the positioning of investments and value. Then applying immediacy to the solution (through mobile technology) and sharing those resolutions (through social technology) becomes a matter of strategy implementation.
Result
Consumers provided with mobile devices for basic service entering the park | Increase in customer satisfaction by 30% in 1 year | Improved staff morale
NEW SERVICE INTRODUCTION FOR AN IT SERVICE PROVIDER
Challenge
This technology services business has a very successful model in serving many areas of the telecoms and media landscape but was struggling to find traction in the cable & satellite business. Our mission was to help develop a strategy, portfolio and go to market model which worked in the cable and satellite business
Idea
Some market segments have very different dynamics to others irrespective of the business. Even familiar territory can become unfamiliar in the face of subtle shifts in emphasis. Cable and satellite businesses have a different business mix, different history and different leadership styles to traditional "telephone" companies which informs everything from philosophy to technology standards. Walking through these requirements, setting strategy, providing insight into changes to messaging market facing offers and providing introductions helped the business get re-started
Result
Winning first new business in over 2 years in cable & satellite business | Re-launch of customer facing offers (including contact center outsourcing) | New market materials and sales talk track
OPERATIONAL IMPROVEMENT FOR SMALL CONSTRUCTION BUSINESS
Challenge
This small company is engaged in the window treatment business - in an era of large scale growth, construction and cost-conscious home renovation, a good business to be in. Their employees have been in the business for some time and often show great ingenuity in designing and developing custom solutions to meet individual needs - but how could they take common optimizations and great innovative ideas and commercialize those to add value to the core business?
Idea
In a small business with limited resources, it's often not easy to make decisions which could divert everyone's attention from the core mission. It's also complex to become a manufacturer of custom equipment when the core business is servicing standard equipment. Woodcote developed an organizational model for fostering and rewarding innovation, constructed a side business to capture and monetize those innovations, developed it as a virtual manufacturer with externally sourced "build to order" capability, and developed a go-to-market model designed to self-fund the new division.
Result
Close to zero net change in Opex operating model | Strategic capability for future | Order capture set up to increase revenues
STRATEGIC DIVESTMENT OF NEW MEDIA BUSINESS
Challenge
Manufacturing giant was divesting a software and media part of their portfolio. Woodcote was called on to help with the separation and ensure NewCo launched on time and could be disentangled easily, especially from a back office IT, Finance, Legal and HR perspective
Idea
Divestments are a great opportunity to rethink the business of the past and look to the future - what is core and non-core now? How can we leverage business partnerships to get started quickly in a new focused market?
Result
On time divestment of media business from former parent | Exiting TSAs for entire back office to reduce cost burden | Simplified structure for new smaller company