Page 416 - Operations Strategy

®
case study 3 • carglass : Building and sustaining a customer-centric organisation 391
But it is the recognition of a top manager that makes people enthusiastic about this
initiative.
Every department can also nominate a ‘local hero’, someone who has provided an
exceptional service for a customer. That is how Carglass® recognises and stimulates
service-oriented behaviour in the company.
Carglass® sets high standards for quality and customer satisfaction, but provides its
employees with help. ‘Get it right the first time’ is part of the Carglass® culture and
this is made possible thanks to the use of well-thought-out standards and efficient
operating procedures. Best practices from one part of the company are transferred to
other units in the organisation. Managers are responsible to ‘take the rest to the best’.
The company has set up cross-functional teams and organises cross trainings to ensure
that team members have the knowledge and skills of the work of others. For example,
the Customer Delight Centers that do not meet customer satisfaction or quality tar-
gets can ask for help from field coaches. Field coaches are former Customer Delight
Center managers who provide training on communication, sales, service orientation,
and quality to the entire Customer Delight Center team. The company has set up a
9-week ‘Smile on Tour’ program where the field coaches observe why the service is not
up to standard. Together with the teams they then come up with a concrete action plan
to improve their customer satisfaction scores. Carglass® has also organised a summer
school program to further develop the people from various departments in the organi-
sation. The Business Plan Implementation Team that consists of the managers of the
Executive Committee and department heads plans and discusses activities which span
the entire organisation.
In addition, Carglass® organises several national and international competitions. The
‘Best of Carglass® Belux’ is a competition organised every two years between the service
technicians of the 43 Customer Delight Centers. Jury members include Carglass® and
Belron® employees; delegates of the insurance and leasing partners are invited to watch
the competition. More than 50 per cent of the technicians participate in this competi-
tion. The best technician then represents Carglass® Belux in the international ‘Best of
Belron®’ competition, a competition that is also organised every two years. (It is worth
mentioning that four out of the six winners of the ‘Best of Belron®’ competition were
from Carglass® Belux.) There are significant financial rewards for the winner. For Car-
glass®, this competition shows that the company is very serious about delivering a top
quality service. And for the participating technicians, it is a fantastic occasion to learn.
During the yearly roadshows, the top management communicates the results of the
past year as well as the goals for the following year. It introduces the new strategy pro-
jects, and features some of the best Carglass® performers of the last year. This event is
important to create momentum to celebrate the successes and to inspire employees to
push even harder the next year.

raising the bar

But with all those fantastic results, Jean-Paul Teyssen wondered whether he could push
the organisation much further in customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction.
With customer satisfaction scores of 97 per cent and employee satisfaction scores of
96 per cent, what was there to improve? Did it really make sense to try to achieve satis-
faction scores of 100 per cent? And more important, if there was nothing to improve,
would that mark the end of the company’s exceptional culture?

Z03 Operations Strategy 62492.indd 391 03/03/2017 16:04