Embedding

I have been thinking a lot about the relationship between the work that you do and the place that you do it and I have become more and more convinced that if place matters at all then the best location is to be as close to your customers as possible.  If place doesn’t matter then anywhere will do.

If someone’s role is to provide support to customers then why can’t they be based from that organisation’s location rather then working out of our own office?  It is not technology that is holding us back.  If the customer has a wireless network then off we go.  Even if they don’t then 3G or now 4G connections are usually available, so for anyone who works through a monitor or needs to have a base out in the field, a customer’s premises could offer a better alternative location than our own organisation’s buildings.

It is culture that stops us.  It’s just not right.  We can’t have people sitting in customer’s offices, they might ask us to do things, they might want to chat to us and ask us to solve their problems which might give them an unfair advantage over other customers.  Other customers might want the same.

We need to see our people don’t we? We need to know they have checked in and are beavering away on what we need them to do yet what we need them to do is to do things, chat to customers and solve their problems and make them feel valued.  We want other customers to ask us for the same service.

So we tried it.  We embedded a field engineer in East Durham Homes, a registered social landlord and one of our most significant clients.  Rather than being based out of our Seaham office, about five miles away, they would set up shop within the customer.  If there were things to do for EDH they would do them, if there weren’t then they would get on with other customer issues.  If they needed to visit other customers then that is what they would do.  They did exactly what they would normally have done only started from the customer.

Yes, when they were in EDH people came and talked to them.  People interrupted him when he was sitting at his workstation.  If they didn’t then he would wander around, when he could, and get involved.  They asked them about how to get their ICT to work better, to fix niggling little things they would never have bothered anyone with and for general help.  It was a great success.  Our engineer became one of their family and helped to improve the performance of our customer and enhance our reputation.

And that is exactly what we set out to achieve.  Business should not be about us winning at the expense of our customers.  The success of our clients should be right up there for us.  The greater their success then the greater is ours and having a very close relationship at an operational level certainly helps.  As Stephen R Covey says, it is a win win situation.