Customer Satisfaction: Bottom Tier 48% to Gold Standard 89% in 2 years.
 Situation: Large consumer bank experiencing significant growth in scale and reach through an aggressive acquisition strategy…the good news, it worked. Over the course of a few years, this became the largest bank in the region. The bad news? Customers felt they had no choice and (like the smaller banks, themselves) felt acquired. Worse? Employees felt threatened and unsure of their future and treated customers accordingly. The organization was a frequent target in the media for poor customer service; and current customer satisfaction surveys confirmed just how poor the customer experience had become…to the tune of only a 48% satisfaction rating… bottom ranking within their industry.
The Response: SCG quickly assessed the current culture and discovered the fundamental issue. The bank didn’t have one. Actually it did, but it was the result (even accident) of the multiple mergers and acquisitions. It did not have a shared culture, let alone a high-performance culture geared to serve customers. In fact, we discovered the opposite. The behavior of managers and employees alike reflected that of cost-cutting pressures typical in an on-going merger environment; doing the minimum at the lowest cost.
Beginning with the senior management team, SCG helped leaders discover that the company had to make a 180 degree turn. Starting with their strategy development work, as well as their own management behavior, the team identified key points of change. SCG helped leaders define a powerful new mission and clear (behavioral-based) values. The mission was about serving customers in new and effective ways. SCG pointed out how creating a compelling mission and actively engaging all employees in its implications can, in short order, reverse performance. SCG set out (as designers and facilitators) with the senior team to engage each employee in the mission through a series of powerful events.
Following a roll-out to more then 10, 000 employees, SCG then worked closely with the management team in identifying support systems that would ensure the change got traction, including performance management (PMO’s), compensation, etc. SCG helped organize cross-functional teams to tackle specific customer issues, discovering problems but more importantly, developing solutions. As each opportunity for change was discovered, SCG helped teams execute accordingly, working hard to tie all the change initiatives back to the mission. Before long, employee surveys suggested a newly energized organization focused on one mission: “To value the customer as your own!”
Best practices were identified and shared more consistently from town hall meetings to the daily management practices of the line and branch managers. Gold Standard Customer Satisfaction ratings were now possible, even probable.
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Revenue Growth: $200m to $1B in 4 years.
 Situation: Securities Processing Company struggling to build a strong growth track record, the market itself becoming tired, margins on products getting tighter and tighter over time. The first step in building a growth story certainly had to include an acquisition strategy to become as dominant as possible in the market, but the organization also had to figure out how to reframe its value in the market, its fundamental value proposition.
Response: SCG partnered with the Executive team by examining its current business and helped it stretch outside the predictable in defining a fundamental shift in its identity as a firm. By redefining its identity from securities processing company to a transaction management firm, we opened a huge spectrum of value-added products and services with significantly wider margins typically appreciated by highly innovative companies. SCG then helped design a global rollout, introducing the change not just to employees, but key constituents across the global bank. The leadership of the “re-born” firm also recognized that acquisitions can now include an even more strategic mix of companies that will boost the growth story on a number of fronts.
SCG moved quickly as designers, facilitators and as catalysts for action teams, organized an effective support system, providing just-in-time training and orientation for managers and employees alike, ensuring a focused culture throughout all the acquisitions. SCG then recommended to management the building of a leadership infrastructure that ultimately got more voices involved in strategic decisions and management issues. It also served as a cutting edge leadership development practice as managers were learning new skills while doing the work of the work… Key acquisitions were made, new products were developed, increased profits meant increased investment in new technologies which led to even more innovative products and services...suddenly this sleepy securities processing company was becoming a vital, energized growth story of its own!
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