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Press Release

Greenfields wins National Training award for Eastern Region

Essex-based Greenfields Community Housing has won a National Training award in the East of England Medium Employer Category.

Greenfields is now competing against eleven other national organisations to win the overall Winner of the Year for its category and will find out the result at the awards ceremony on 5th October at WorldSkills (the world’s largest international skills competition) at ExCeL in London.

The National Training Awards (NTAs) “recognise and celebrate Investors in People accredited organisations that have delivered outstanding organisational benefits by directly linking the training needs of their people to the business needs of their organisation.”

Julie Breed, Head of Human Resources at Greenfields, said: “We decided to apply for an award to recognise the significant culture change we achieved by using the international Mary Gober Customer Service training. As well as giving all staff two days intensive training in the customer service methodology, several staff members also become ‘coaches’ who continually reinforce the Gober principles to remind staff about aiming for excellence in Customer Service. I am very proud of everyone at Greenfields who has helped us to win this award.”

An NTA representative said: “Winning an award can directly impact on an organisation’s success. One in three have said that their organisation has become more efficient.”

Previous Eastern NTA winners include Wickes in Hemel Hempstead, Pitney Bowes in Harlow and the MOD Guard Service in Braintree.

Greenfields was accredited with Investors in People Gold earlier this year.  www.greenfieldsch.org.uk

Mary Gober International would like to congratulate SYHA in winning the prestigious ‘Regional Social Landlord of the Year’ at this year’s Housing Excellence Awards. 23 other housing associations where entered for the award.

Narendra Bajaria CBE, Chair of SYHA’s Board commented:

“Becoming the Regional Social Landlord of the Year is a great achievement for us as the award focuses on so many aspects of the work of our organisation.

The fact that we are able to show that we deliver excellence to our customers in so many different ways is truly a credit to all at SYHA.”

South Yorkshire Housing Association implemented the Gober Method training in 2009.

http://www.syha.co.uk/Latest-News/SYHA+Celebrate+Success

Bank of America have reported that following the introduction of a Live Chat service which exceeded 90% in customer satisfaction, it was evident that the role of the front line was changing. It was clear that the easier, less emotional queries and transactions were now being completed through the self service channels. This resulted in more complex and potentially emotional queries being the ones most likely to be dealt with over the phone. Agents would need to be equipped to deal with this. In addition, it was clear that there were demographic differences between the team providing the service to Bank of America customers (average age 24 years) and the customers themselves (average age 45 years).

A partnership was instigated with Mary Gober International in Q4 2009. Following several weeks of call listening and agent interviews, a new programme was designed to give the agents both the mind-set and approach to build a better rapport with customers and deal with more challenging contacts in a positive and solution-oriented manner.

Following a pilot scheme early in 2010 there were positive results:

• · The ‘Gober Method’™ saw a 50% reduction in Manager Escalations
• · And a 20% reduction in formal Customer Complaints

A full roll-out is now being planned for Q1 2011 and forms part of a progressive plan for Bank of America to provide the best possible service.

Congratulations to Bank of America for scooping four major awards including the ‘Best Achievement in Customer Service’ at the prestigious 2011 Card & Payments Awards.

The ‘Best Achievement in Customer Service’ Award was given to the company for ‘Bank of America in Pursuit of Excellence’ – a programme the judges said “demonstrated how the online medium was playing an increasing role in resolving customer service issues”.

Ian O’Doherty, Europe Card Executive for Bank of America, said: “To win four key national awards in the face of such strong competition is a fantastic achievement for our business. We are absolutely delighted.

A lot of our effort is focused on putting our customers at the centre of everything we do and it’s great this has received the endorsement of the industry.”

“We are very proud of our strong affinity relationships. Play.com and Amazon.co.uk are fantastic partnerships that are delivering greater choice and better offers to the UK credit card market.

“Our customers are our business and we will continue to find ways to bring more choice, simplicity and value to all that we do for them.”

The prestigious 2011 Awards attracted around 1,370 people from across the payments and financial services world to recognise best practice in customer service, excellence and innovation across the industry.

Bank of America recently implemented a rollout of the ‘Gober Method’™ in their Telephone Access Contact Centre and have trained some of their own internal Trainers to continue to deploy the Gober Method skills to support their ongoing commitment to delivering an exceptional customer experience.

Freebridge Community Housing is the largest provider of affordable housing in West Norfolk.  With around 7,000 properties, Freebridge is responsible for managing relationships with a large number of customers located across the borough.  At the heart of Freebridge is a commitment to ‘customer focus’ which is also one of the organisation’s five values.

Mary Gober International has been working with Freebridge Community Housing since 2010.  Please view the detailed Freebridge Community Housing Case Study by clicking the link below:

Freebridge Community Housing Case Study

Mary Gober International Ltd delivers training based on our unique Psychology & Language of Service™ which is proven to deliver improvements in customer satisfaction, employee engagement, operational efficiency, regulatory performance and financial results.

Mary Gober personally delivers her 2-Day ‘Gober Method’™ Open Seminars every 6 weeks in Heathrow, London.  Open Seminars in Sydney and Belfast are delivered by our experienced Accredited ‘Gober Method’ Consultants.

This Seminar will enable you to evaluate the Gober Methods and see how our flexible implementation options could work in your business.  This Seminar is also the easiest, fastest and most enjoyable way to see how the specific mindset and language skills taught will make a step-change in your service ethic, performance and culture.  We are confident that our implementing our Methodology will make 2011 your best year for customer service excellence.

For further information and to book your place please follow the link below:

Click here to book your place on the March 14-15 Open Seminar

Results experienced by our clients following the implementation of the Gober Method include:

• Staff turnover down from 30% to 12.8%

• 1st time resolution of customer complaints up from 87% to 90%

• Staff satisfaction up from 46% to 79%

• Staff sickness absence down by 25%

• Customer complaints down by 20%

• Recognition in The Sunday Times’ ’100 Best Companies to Work For’, including top ranking among
‘The 100 Best Small Companies to Work For’

• Rankings in the Finanical Times Top 50 Best Workplaces

• Housing Association, 3 Star Audit Commission awards

People ask me all the time how to maximise the value of a large scale training implementation to deliver a culture enhancement or change. Many organisations are looking to maximise employee engagement, how to optimise relationships across any business both internally and externally and how to ensure that the discretionary efforts of your people are focused to differentiate performance.  There are many excellent training approaches to help organisations develop their people to meet these needs.  The actions taken by the organisation to support and embed any training delivered truly do differentiate a highly-impactful and sustainable change from a short-lived “initiative” which is not integrated into the very DNA of the organisation.

So if you are considering embarking on a major training initiative then it is essential that you consider not only the training initiative itself, but also the effort and focus required post training to maximise the benefits.  All managers know that this is essential, however, sometimes struggle with how to do this. Let me give you some ideas.

Let us assume that you have chosen well. That the training programme delivered is well received and meets organisational expectations. Embedding and sustainment activities now take over – many you can deliver yourself – for some you may wish to work with your training provider. From the many great embedding and sustainment activities that can be undertaken, I have chosen my top 8 activities which will help you get the very best out of the training in the long term:

• Leaders and all managers must use the new skills consistently – they must be role models. Supporting managers either through coaching or more detailed training is a foundation to them being able to develop their own people through feedback and coaching.
• A simple dashboard measuring the impact of the training should be put in place. This should be publicised making links to successes achieved and the use of new skills.
• The new skills should be explicitly linked to the achievement of the company vision and values as well as performance metrics – this can be publicised in company newsletters, in briefings and on internal intranet pages.
• Motivational feedback must be consistently provided when people demonstrate the new skills and when they missed an opportunity to do so.
• Coaching by managers for their staff and peer-to-peer coaching is ideal and an effective and practical coaching programme will accelerate the learning and adoption of new skills.
• Locally within teams, managers must make the benefits of using the new skills or behaviours explicit – wherever they can, they should articulate the benefits of the changes in terms understood by their teams – so that there is a link between successes achieved and the change in culture or use of new skills.
• Regular individual and team reviews of the successful use of new skills should take place – especially in 1-2-1 meetings or team meetings – injecting fun and engaging everyone in how to take ownership for the success of the investment comes in here.
• Demonstration of the skills and behaviours should be recognised and rewarded – they should be clearly represented in competency frameworks, and in appropriate KPIs, so that they are part of standard performance management.

In my experience, if these 8 activities take place consistently, following any major training activity across an organisation, this will differentiate the impact and return from the training, maximising its effectiveness and giving you the enhanced business results you are looking for!

Julie Shacallis, Lead Consultant

There are a few places left on MGI’s dynamic and powerful 2-Day Public Seminar on 2-3 November 2010 in Sydney.

Delivered by Mary Gober’s lead consultant Julie Shacallis, this 2-Day Seminar will give you the heightened motivation, tools and techniques required to deliver consistently superior service.  If you are looking to evaluate the Gober Method to see whether there is a fit with your organisation, this Seminar will enable you to experience the full content and therefore, is the ideal platform to evaluate.

Delegates are attending in Sydney from a wide variety of industries, including financial services, hospitality, retail, banking.  

If you are interested in attending personally or would like members of your team to attend, please click here to find out more.