Apex Computing - an innovation consultancy case study

Client

Apex Computing Services, an IT Support company based in Manchester, UK

Introduction

'Apex' asked Innovation Company to see how it could help their business with innovation consultancy and business growth. Apex had grown very well through stewardship of the two directors for around 15 years. The company had grown to ~20 employees. The two directors were concerned that because they had started the business almost from school, they had no prior experience of running a business and thought they may be doing some things incorrectly.

The truth, in fact, was that they ran their company so much better than so-called 'business professionals' that I know. However, there were of course areas in which we could help.

Challenge

After initial meetings and thought-provoking discussions between both parties, it was discovered that existing clients should be focussed on more, as the company had grown to over 200 clients. Many of those clients were still wanting/expecting a close relationship with the two directors because of the great personal service that they had given as the company had grown.

Of course, as owners, maintaining a close, personal relationship with so many clients is not possible. Even attempting to do this could hamper the future success (and growth) of any business as it leaves little time to grow the business, to innovate, and to enjoy the successes of growing a business.

So, how could Apex offer similar levels of personal service as they did during their growth?

Solution

Having seen similar situations before - where companies had grown and the owners needed to spend less time with clients to help the business to develop - we set about studying the team that had been built to service clients. Were these people giving the same levels of service?

We began by observing the team of ~10 IT support staff that answered incoming client queries and remotely fixed/travelled to repair any issues. The manager of the department was a diligent technical support person that had recently been promoted from within. He had excellent technical knowledge but very little management experience.

We noticed early on that support levels were inconsistent as some support staff were better in certain types of scenarios than others. As with technical staff the world over, some staff were answering the 'actual' technical part of queries correctly, without understanding the deeper reasons for a call, or the commercial impact that looking at queries in a different way could give.

For a business owner, knowing that customers are being dealt with in the same (great) way each and every time, whether they are present or not, is the holy grail. And for this to start to happen, we applied the following:

• Implemented 'Croissant'
  • This is a process, 'stolen' from the company with the greatest customer support on earth (Wynn Resorts), that helps team members to 'battle' against each other to offer better customer experience whenever a customer experience is had.
  • Each day, the manager of the department asks each team member what they did to go "above and beyond" for their customers the previous day. By asking this question out in the open, team members quickly understand what is - and what is not - a good way to deal with customers, and at the same time, offer an extra level of support, so that they get on the manager's list of 'above and beyond-ness'.
  • This gamification process (that we call 'Croissant') can dramatically change (sometimes overnight) how a company treats it customers, raising standards to levels not previously seen.

• Mentored the Support Manager

  • It was clear that the support manager was great with technical issues, but had not yet found his feet in learning how to manage his team effectively - and indeed taking charge, rather than having the team take charge of him. This is something, of course, that all new managers must go through. Control needed to be taken by the manager so that consistency of how team members supported customers became second nature. To ensure this, we implemented the following things:

    • Implemented 'Fibonacci' task scoring
      • Each and every task that belonged to the manager was scored in the early Fibonacci sequence (1,2,3,5,8,13,21), rather than an arbitrary '1-10'. This ensured from the off that the most pressing tasks and issues were completed/resolved, rather than temptation to work on what may be the more interesting things that need doing. Because Fibonacci numbers are hard to blend into each other (the difference between a '21' and a '13' is so much clearer than the difference between a '7' and an '8'), tasks are generally correctly scored and therefore work done is generally much more streamlined. This scoring system also made it to all tasks set by the manager to his staff.

    • 'Silly' Questions

      • It always surprises us how many owners and managers spend too much time entertaining questions and requests of staff when staff know (or can resolve) 80% of questions without the need to ask.

      Because of the environment, we implemented a system where the manager would write on a whiteboard the 'silliest' question of the day that someone had asked. Within a week, questions dropped by 50%, with this dropping by over 80% after a few weeks. Simple. This sounds whimsical, but the time gained by having to spend much less time answering such questions allowed the manager to much improve his managerial skills, and also impose his control of the team and how it operated. It also ensured that the staff improve themselves and gain more confidence by resolving things themselves.

    • Micro-tasks
      • To further assert his control (which subsequently improves consistency of client support), the manager now sets projects that keep team members busy in between support calls. By creating tasks such as data collection routines, team members not only provided much more value to the business, they understand much more about their roles, the company, and clients.
    • TimeTrain
      • Implementing TimeTrain, our micro-learning platform allows for each team member to learn continuously about various parts of their role including how to deal with various technical tasks, how to speak to customers, general office policies and more.

Benefit

Whenever a company grows, those that started the company are posed with the problem of wanting to control every aspect, speak with every customer, but also be responsible for growing the business further. Being able to leave others in charge of things they once did is something they find exciting and excruciating at the same time.

By implementing the changes listed above, the new manager of the department was able to take more control of the team, and leave the owners to spend more time on vital responsibilities.

Result

In our role as an innovation consultancy, we live for the results that our changes bring. Some changes are initial, and very visible to the client. However, some changes are immediately visual to us, yet will take a while to manifest in the eyes of a client.

In the case of Apex, there are both immediate, visual, changes, such as the rapid improvement of the management skills of the team manager, and changes that we can see, that will be seen by the company in due course.

In a very short space of time, the manager now has gained much more control of the team, asserting his authority, whilst keeping the team a great place to work. In 'self-organising' by using the Fibonacci sequence, and removing unnecessary questions, he has more time to spend planning for the future, rather than firefighting. Requiring the team to commit to micro-tasks in-between working with clients, he gains further control, and improves several elements of the team and business at the same time.

In terms of changes that may not be so apparent to the client right now, we see that as the manager has taken more control, the directors of the business have been able to spend more time on other aspects of the business. Other not-too-apparent-changes include the level of customer service is forever changed in the business, and will continue to improve as the implemented policies and procedures become the 'norm'.