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

Wolverhampton Homes Awarded Maximum Three-Star Rating by the Audit Commission

Catherine Dass, Head of HR Strategy and Organisational Development at Wolverhampton Homes is delighted to have achieved ‘excellent’ status and a three-star rating.  Catherine believes that the work they have undertaken with Mary Gober International across the organisation has been a major contribution to their success alongside the positive leadership from their CEO, Lesley Roberts.

Wolverhampton Homes’ three-star rating by the Audit Commission shows that the organisation has improved since it received a two-star rating in 2007.  Among the strengths commended by the Audit Commission was a strong commitment to customer care, value for money and increased employment and training opportunities.

Mary Gober International has worked in partnership with Wolverhampton Homes since 2009.  The entire organisation is being trained in the ‘Gober Method’™ from the senior team through to managers and frontline staff who are sustaining this new service style through ongoing coaching following their successful accreditation as coaches of the ‘Gober Method’.

Please click the link below to read the full press release from Wolverhampton Homes.

http://www.wolverhamptonhomes.org.uk/LatestNews.aspx

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.

The percentage of employees stating that they are proud to work for Virgin Holidays following their Gober Method training implementation increased to 95%.  Click here to find out how.

Staff sickness absence decreased by 25% and staff attrition rates fell to 7%, significantly below the national average, after Gober Method training was implemented at West Mercia Police.  Click here to find out how.

Virgin Holidays Train Staff to Deliver Exceptional Experiences

Virgin Holidays has seen an increased satisfaction among customers, key partners and other important trade and consumer-facing clients since a company-wide bespoke values 2-day course.  Refreshing the company values, all 3 based on ensuring the customer is at the heart of every area of the business, has seen tangible results in customer satisfaction, internal and external relationships.

Amanda Wills, Managing Director of Virgin Holidays, says: “I have always believed passionately in the basic truth that staff in a customer-facing business who live and breathe a common purpose can drive sustained success whatever the commercial backdrop.  As the travel industry enters its toughest trading conditions yet, we have been consistent in increasing investment in staff training and engagement.  There was never consideration of scaling back or compromising in our focus on our principle success drive – our people.  Consequently, we are in rude health against market benchmarks, and share a common purpose and belief in our values.”

Virgin Holidays offers holidays to the Caribbean, USA, Far and Middle East and the Indian Ocean.  Its self-declared vision is to provide “the best holidays in the whole wide world.”  Managers felt that while there were pockets of brilliant service, there was also an opportunity to build more consistency and focus, and cement ownership of the customer journey among all staff.

Through training, the company wanted to build further on a good CSQ rating among customers, and protect its healthy level of repeat customers.  Mary Gober International designed the “Living Our Values” 2-day course to meet the company’s needs, developing the optimum mindset for giving enthusiastic and genuine customer service, while also improving communication skills that trainees could use to find positive solutions.  Above all, the training aimed to remind delegates what exceptional service looks and feels like, and how to deliver that consistently.  It made the link between the company’s vision and values and how staff work with each other and with customers.

Over the course of six weeks, trainers working in groups of three or more held interactive round table seminars for 50 to 100 people at a time.  A total of 580 people took part.  Success was measured through customer surveys, call monitoring, statistical information gathering and staff survey results.  Following the training, customer satisfaction has reached record levels.  Furthermore, 97% of staff say they understand the Company’s values.

Terri Bailey, General Manager of People and Performance at Virgin Holidays, explains: “The seminars have resulted in a real shift in behaviour, particularly in the psychology of how we approach customer service.  Our staff now really understands the importance of responding positively to customers, every time, explaining what we can do for someone, whether an internal or external customer.  This provided a boost to our ongoing investment as a company in innovative skills and culture training to always ensure the customer journey, in whatever format, is the priority.”

Travel company Virgin Holidays employs 701 people and has made the Skills Pledge.

As a professional in the customer service arena, and as a citizen, I wanted you to be aware of a monumental and revolutionary change that is underway in the 43 police services and authorities across Britain.

I became aware of this important development as a result of working closely with West Mercia Police (4^th largest Policing District in Britain) helping them implement the Home Office Citizen Focus Agenda and the Policing Pledge.

Starting this year, the Home Office has published a single national target for the police – so the police service answers to the public – not the government.  It is now local people and communities, rather than central government, telling the police what service they need and holding them to account via The Policing Pledge.

How are they doing it?  By being bold – scrapping all but one central target – to raise public confidence.  This fundamental shift in police accountability and reporting has been instituted to dramatically improve customer service and engage with communities so that by working together, crime and anti-social behavior, that matter to citizens locally, are being addressed.

Confidence levels currently vary across the country with the latest national average at 46%.  This single-minded focus was set as a deliberate, serious challenge.  The Home Office believes the target needs to be challenging if a real change in public confidence in the police is to occur.

By 2012, the national target is that 60% of people are confident that their police service is satisfactorily addressing what matters to them locally, so they can get on with their lives.

The Policing Pledge is described as a ‘deal’ between the police and the public.  It sets out what citizens can expect from police nationally and locally – such as minimum standards on response times, crime maps, local crime information and very importantly, monthly meetings.

To support the police in delivering this new confidence target, there is a package of slashes to red tape freeing up time to enable every officer to spend at least 80% of their time visibly working in neighborhoods and patrolling at the times and places where citizens tell them they are needed the most.

There is also a real step-up in public meetings which are scheduled at least once a month to decide policing priorities with citizens, to meet local needs and provide updates on local crime and police activity.  At the meetings, information is given on specific crimes, what has happened to those brought to justice and details of what actions are being taken to make the neighborhood safer – all in a determined effort to drive up confidence.

I have been very impressed with the practical customer-centricity of the Policing Pledge.  I encourage you to read it and discuss it with your team.  Customer-centric is sometimes seen as an academic term – however, as you read the 10 points in the Pledge, you will discover a fine example of customer-centricity in action.  You can find the Policing Pledge on the Home Office website.

I also would encourage you to consider attending your neighborhood police public meetings.  Not only will your input be valuable as a citizen of your community, you will also see a dynamic example of how to engage and listen to customers, find ways to understand their needs and deliver what is important to them.  I am sure we will all gain as we learn from the police – they are doing pioneering work and setting a new standard in customer service for all of us.

To enable organisations to experience our proven training, we are now running regular 2-Day Public Seminars in Sydney.  The next date is 8-9 July 2010.

For more information, please contact Bette McIntyre on +61 (0)2 9089 8883 or via email at bettemcintyre@marygober.com.