Hi there
Welcome to the Scores on the Board learning hub.
This area contains all the information you need to implement and run Scores on the Board® with your team. Work through each of the following areas as it builds on itself.
Please ensure you Ask the Team if you have any questions.
How to navigate:
You can jump to each section by clicking on the image areas on the diagram or by using the navigation on the header. Alternatively, you can scroll from top to bottom. All resources are located on this page in order of implementation.
Getting started with Scores on the Board
Scores on the Board® is a simple and effective system to help continuously improve performance in any organisation. The system will help you power performance within your business. It’s simple, effective and easy to implement in any team.
By implementing the SOTB system into your organisation, you will:
- Ensure that everyone in the team has a say
- Encourage everyone to be involved in improving how they feel and operate as a team
- Empower individuals to suggest ways to improve as individuals and as a team
- Increase communication within the team
- Enable teams to drive business improvement for the customers
- Allow leaders to focus on any area of improvement with the help of their team.
Part 1: Vision
A vision creates a meaningful purpose for your team and is proven to be a powerful motivator for team members. The success of the system always starts with a clear team vision. The vision sets the standard for what the team recognise as good customer service.
When thinking about a vision it should be a simple, emotionally compelling statement of where you want to be. It should inspire and motivate you, your team or your business towards a higher level of performance. An effective vision ensures activities are focused on what needs to be done in order to achieve your ultimate objective.
In this video, Bill explains the reasons for defining a clear team vision and uses examples from former U.S. President Roosevelt to highlight what makes an inspirational vision. Bill then outlines the 7 steps to creating a collaborate team vision:
- Pre-meeting tasks: These focus around setting up the meeting and getting all team members to start thinking about what they want a vision to include.
- Open up the meeting: Clearly state the purpose of the meeting, and encourage participation.
- Commence idea generation: Go through the brainstorming worksheet with your team, write everybody’s responses down and summarise.
- Combine ideas: Look at key themes and look for ways to narrow down your vision.
- Agree on the vision: This may require a poll or further discussion.
- Document the vision: Display your vision in places where team members will see it.
- Close the meeting: Don’t forget to thank your team, and draw attention to how much can be accomplished when you work together.
Part 2: Goals
If your employees are motivated, it creates an engaging experience for the customer. In turn, this can translate into loyalty and profit. This makes knowing which goals will best motivate a team, as well the best way to set these goals, critical skills that every team leader should have.
Setting goals is important in order to give your team something to strive towards. The first step in goal setting is identifying the types of goals that will motivate team members the most, as this is a key step in driving employee and, therefore, customer engagement.
In this video, Bill discussed the three key areas that teams within a business should set goals in, based on the perspectives and experience of various stakeholders:
- Employees
- Customers
- Owners.
Part 3: Feedback
Once your team has set clear goals it is crucial that you collect feedback on goal performance, and make sure that you stay on track. There are many ways to collect feedback, but the most effective is to base it around the three key goal areas – employees, customers, and owners.
Feedback is vital for you and your team to understand how you are tracking. It will help you understand what is happening around you, what is working effectively, and what areas can be improved on.
In this video, Bill continues his explanation of the Scores on the Board continuous improvement system and discusses feedback options available to you. The focus here is on obtaining feedback on the team’s progress from three levels:
- Employees
- Customers
- Owners.
This will go into the team’s monthly feedback cycle, where each month the group will summarise performance across these areas, and discuss this in a feedback/goal-oriented team meeting.
If you have direct contact with your customers, some ways to collect feedback can include:
- A token stand
- A touchpad
- A tablet device.
Part 4: Gaps
You’ve collected feedback from your customers and employees, and now it is time to do something with it. Get your team together for a meeting, and identify any performance gaps – remembering that you are still working towards your team goal!
Tracking your performance is just as important as setting goals in the first place. You should be collecting feedback from your employees and customers monthly, and team meetings to discuss feedback and performance gaps should occur each month just after feedback comes in. Identifying gaps in your performance and determining what the causes where will help you create an action plan.
In this video, Bill discusses how you should go about reviewing your performance. You should get your team together, revisit your vision and team goals, and then record feedback scores (out of 10) on your team scoreboard. This should leave you with a score out of ten for both customer experience and employee experience, which you can compare to your expectations for that month – set at the last meeting.
Here you can identify performance gaps, and openly discuss as a team why you may or may not have met your expectations. Establish which of these reasons are controllable, and rank them in order of priority for next month.
Part 5: Actions
If you want to see improvement from month to month, a collaborative and clearly defined action plan is absolutely necessary. Eliminate performance gaps and reach your team goals with this action plan guide.
Creating a detailed action plan and putting it into practice is the step that will take your team from good to great. Using the reasons identified during your analysis, the team must develop detailed action plans to address the causes of the identified gaps between the goals/expectations and the feedback results.
The action plan should be addressed during your monthly performance improvement meeting. In this video, Bill outlines the methodology to develop a precise and functional action plan. The six stages he focuses on are as follows:
- Discuss possible actions
- Prioritise and select key actions with the highest impact
- Determine the level of action – is it one activity or a series of smaller tasks?
- Allocate responsibility, and record alongside actions
- Agree on time-frame.
With your detailed action plan now in place, it is time to set new goal levels with your team for the next month. Refer back to the goal-setting document for details on how to do this.
Tool Kit
Sample feedback questions
When selecting questions we recommend a numeric question followed by a text question. This will allow you to gain a goal score for your team scoreboard and responses to create actions out of. Please feel free to mix any of the below numeric and text responses.
Staff
Team focused questions
- On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 means operating at peak performance, how well are we operating as a team?
- What could the team do that would improve this over the next month?
- On a scale of 1 to 10 – where 10 means exceeding customer expectations – how well do you think we, as a team, deliver on our customer’s expectations?
- What could we do to improve this?
- On a scale of 1-10, where 10 means a highly effective, how effective is our communication process within the team?
- What could we do to improve the communication processes?
- On a scale of 1-10, where 10 means a highly responsive, how would you rate the responsiveness of the team to each others needs?
- What could we do to improve our responsiveness to each others needs?
- On a scale of 1-10, where 10 means a highly cohesive team, how well do you think we operate as a team?
- What could we do to improve our cohesiveness as a team?
- What is the one thing that you would like the team to focus on improving over the next month?
The most common performance traits that are used for developing questions relating to the team include but are not limited to:
Common purpose
Common goals
Trust
Respect
Involvement in decision making
Effective communication
Deliver on commitments
Reward and incentive programs
Clear team goals
Involvement in problem solving
Continuous improvement
Intensity of work
Value diversity
Work/life balance
Effectiveness of meetings
Focus on tasks
Responsiveness
Leadership focused questions
- As your manager, on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 means extremely helpful, how helpful am I in assisting you to achieve your objectives?
- What can I do to improve my performance as your manager over the next month?
- As your manager, on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 means a very effective communicator, how effective am I as a communicator?
- What could I do to improve my communication with the team members?
- As your manager, on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 means very effective, how effective am I in modelling the behaviours required of a leader?
- What could I do to improve to improve this?
- In working with, or knowing him/her, what words do you believe best describe ’s strengths?
- What projects or activities do you believe (Insert leaders Name> has excelled in, what of his/her behaviours or actions has enabled this?
- What projects or activities do you believe could have performed better in, what actions or behaviours could he have done better?
- What suggestions would you provide in pursuing career success?
The most common performance traits that are used for developing questions relating to the leadership include but are not limited to:
Coaching skills
Clear/concise team goals
Establishes trust
Respect for team members in decision making/problem solving
An effective communicator
An effective listener
Delivers on promises
Encourages accountability and responsibility
Models behaviours
Delegates effectively
Value diversity
Lives the values
Responsive to requests for assistance
An organised leader
Customer focused questions
- On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 means extremely likely, how likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague?
- What suggestions do you have that would improve this?
- On a scale of 1-10, where 10 means very strongly, how strongly do you agree that we are easy to do business with?
- What suggestions do you have that would improve this?
- On a scale of 1-10, where 10 means very strongly, how strongly do you agree that we are helpful and sincere when doing business?
- What suggestions do you have that would improve this?
- On a scale of 1-10, where 10 means very strongly, how strongly do you agree that we are responsive and timely to do business with?
- What suggestions do you have that would improve this?
- On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 means highly responsive, how responsive are we to your needs?
- What suggestions do you have that would improve this?
- On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 means consistently understanding and meeting your needs, how would you rate our consistency?
- What could we do to be more consistent?
- On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 means clear and precise communication, how well do we communicate with you?
- How could we improve our communication with you?
- On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 means exceeding your expectations in our service delivery, how would you rate our service delivery?
- What could we do to exceed your expectations?
- On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 means that you have received the highest quality service, how would you rate the quality of our service?
- What would improve the service you receive from us?
The most common customer expectations for developing questions include but are not limited to:
Responsiveness
Timeliness
Accuracy
Helpfulness
Sense of urgency
Clear communication
Honesty
Friendliness
Compassionate
Effective communication
Deliver on commitments
Precise information
Understand their needs
Meet their needs
Sincere
Feedback options
Speak with your Scores on the Board consultant for recommended feedback collection options to suit your business needs.
Additional resources
The Scores on the Board® approach for obtaining customer experience feedback is tailored to the type of business environment in which the team operates. The Office Approach is used where staff and customers have both phone-to-phone and face-to-face interaction. Sometimes in these environments the customers may actually be Internal Customers. These are colleagues in other parts of your organisation that rely upon the work of your team to be able to do their own work.
The five part system is implemented as follows:
1. Vision
A compelling team purpose involving the ideal customer experience is created by the team. This may involve both an internal and external customer experience and result in two Score Boards and Visions.
2. Goals
For the office approach goals are traditionally set to customer (internal and external) and staff experience. The Operational Effectiveness Indicators usually impact the controls of costs / expenses. The most effective operational measures within the teams control usually involve accuracy, quality and / or timeliness.
3. Feedback
Staff Experience
Manual Feedback or Electronic Feedback is used for the Office Approach. Staff Experience is designed to be anonymous.
Customer Experience
Electronic Feedback is traditionally used for the Office Approach where internal and / or external customers are asked to rate the team’s performance on a regular basis.
- In head office environments, when Scores on the Board™ is introduced to an internal support team, the team leader or line manager produces a list of internal customers with their contact details and provides them to the Bill Lang International Scores on the Board™ Support Team.
- Each scoring period, the Scores on the Board™ Support Team send an email survey to the nominated internal customers.
- The Scores on the Board™ Support Team collate the results and send the nominated team leader or line manager internal customer experience scores out of 10 for relevant measures and a summary of suggestions for improvement.
- This process protects the anonymity of the respondents and ensures that the internal support team gets the feedback data it needs without being overloaded with administrative work.
- An automated online system is available as an alternative for organisations with a large number of teams using Scores on the Board™.
- Frequency of collecting customer feedback – The Office Approach usually involves a fortnightly or monthly cycle for the Customer Experience survey. The customer experience questions are selected by the team. Questions reflect activities and services that are within the control of the team. Questions can vary to meet the cycle and priorities decided by the team.
- Introduction scripts or standard templates for each team member should be used when introducing the feedback system to the customer. The Introductory Statement reflects either the Team’s Vision or the Team Leader’s Vision of the ideal internal customer experience. For example, sample questions could include:
- How would you rate the helpfulness of our staff?
- How would you rate the timeliness of our service?
- How would you rate the knowledge of our team?
- How would you rate our ability to meet with your team’s needs?
- How would you rate our responsiveness to your team?
- To keep this working well, the questions and objectives may become more specific to the team being surveyed, such as the Sales Team, Management Team or Production Team.
- Also the team leader or line manager should take care to communicate actions and outcomes back to the internal customer teams.
Operational Experience
With operational effectiveness, data should be obtained in the normal organisational way and entered onto the Team Scoreboard. The time cycle chosen for operational effectiveness may depend on the nature of the operational effectiveness being focussed on and the availability of scoring data.
In any case, a SCORE card should be established and performance tracked in the same way as for staff experience and customer experience by using a template Operational Effectiveness Score Card. These traditionally involve Sales, Expenses or Quality based measures such as:
Revenue / Cost of Goods / Overheads / Expenses / Gross Profit / Net Profit / Product Sales / Quality / Quantity / Output / Compliance / Responsiveness / Timeliness / Productivity / Turnover / Absenteeism / Staff Competence
4. Gaps & 5. Actions
- The SCORE and the anonymous summary of issues are presented at the regular Scores on the Board™ team meeting. The summarised information separates “Issues within the Team’s Control” and those “Issues not within the Team’s control”. This information is invaluable as it helps teams decide on appropriate priority issues for the cycle. Then Action Plans can be developed. Also issues that are outside their control can be escalated to more senior management or interdependent teams for attention and action.
- The team selects a couple of key actions for the cycle and then each team member identifies personal actions to support the team actions. The Team Actions are recorded on the Team Score Board.
The Scores on the Board® approach to obtain customer experience feedback is tailored to the type of business environment in which the team operates. The Retail Approach is used where staff and customers have face-to-face interaction.
The five part system is implemented as follows:
1. Vision
A compelling team purpose involving the ideal customer experience is created by the team.
2. Goals
For the retail approach goals are set for customer and staff experience. Operational effectiveness indicators may be set and would usually involve a sales or product focus to compliment the traditional financial measures.
3. Feedback
Staff Experience
Manual Feedback is usually used for the Retail Approach where not all staff have access to email and the internet. A Staff Feedback Card is used. Staff Feedback Cards are designed to be anonymous. Each period the team leader or line manager asks all team members to complete a Staff Feedback Card. At the end of the period the team leader or line manager collects all the cards, calculates an average score and summarises suggestions for improvement. The feedback tool for scoring and summarising suggestions for the team to review is your Team Score Card and Action Plan.
Customer Experience
- Customers are asked to rate the team’s performance as they leave the Retail environment using the Customer Experience Stand.
- The stand is located at customer exit points and tokens are provided at sales and service counters. At the end of each customer interaction, each team member asks customers to place a token in the appropriate slot of the Customer Experience stand to reflect their feelings about the service they received.
- At the end of each shift or working day, a team member counts the number of tokens in each slot and calculates a SCORE for the team.
- Introducing the Tokens and Customer Feedback Stand to Customers occurs as the service or sales interaction is finished and there is nothing else you can help the customer with, simply ask the customer:
“Would you mind scoring our performance today by placing this token in the appropriate slot at the stand over there?”
Then if they say yes or no, finish the conversation by saying:
“Thank-you for visiting ”
If a team member is asked why you are doing this, they simply answer:
“We are committed to improving our service, your feedback will help us to continue to improve”
- It is important that team members use common sense when issuing tokens to customers and that the feedback questions reflect what is within the team’s control. For example,
- How would you rate our overall service today?
- How well have we informed you of new products in our store?
- How would you rate the level of our product knowledge?
- How would you rate the presentation of our store today?
- How would you rate the friendliness and helpfulness of our staff today?
- How would you rate our ability to meet your needs today?
- Frequency of collecting customer feedback – During the first few weeks it is beneficial to use the customer experience stand each day to give the teams a clear understanding of the customer experience. Then after the first few weeks reduce the usage to 1–2 days per week. You should ensure you rotate the days of the week.
- Mystery shopper programs – If your business already operates a Mystery Shopper Program, this can be a useful tool using an independent source of feedback. It also provides you with good information about your performance relative to other locations. However, it is not immediate. The tokens provide you with customer experience scores on a day-by-day basis and allows your team to make changes quickly and to see whether they have improved the customer experience by making the changes. In addition, the Customer Experience Stand allows you get feedback from dozens to hundreds of customers each period.
- Changing the feedback questions – In retail settings, it is possible to select from a range of questions to seek feedback from your customers. Some examples that have been used are shown above. If your organisation has service standards or brand attributes and values, these can easily be incorporated into what you ask customers about.
Operational Experience
With operational effectiveness, data should be obtained in the normal organisational way and entered onto the Team Scoreboard. The time cycle chosen for operational effectiveness may depend on the nature of the operational effectiveness being focussed on and the availability of scoring data.
In any case, a SCORE card should be established and performance tracked in the same way as for staff experience and customer experience by using a template Team Scorecard and Action Plan . These traditionally involve Sales, Expenses or Quality based measures such as:
Revenue / Cost of Goods / Overheads / Expenses / Gross Profit / Net Profit / Product Sales / Quality / Quantity / Output / Compliance / Responsiveness / Timeliness / Productivity / Turnover / Absenteeism / Staff Competence
4. Gaps & 5. Actions
- The SCORE and the anonymous summary of issues are presented at the regular Scores on the Board® team meeting. The summarised information separates “Issues within the Team’s Control” and those “Issues not within the Team’s control”. This information is invaluable as it helps teams decide on appropriate priority issues for the cycle. Then Action Plans can be developed. Also issues that are outside their control can be escalated to more senior management or interdependent teams for attention and action.
- The team selects a couple of key actions for the cycle and then each team member identifies personal actions to support the team actions. The Team Actions are recorded on the Team Scoreboard.
Frequently asked questions about customer feedback in retail environments
How are our customers likely to react?
In our experience across a range of retail environments, in different countries, the vast majority of customers respond positively and are more than willing to provide you with feedback. You will actually receive more positive feedback than you may expect.
What is the response rate from our customers likely to be?
In our experience the response rate from customers is on average greater than 80%.
How long would we need to keep the Customer Experience stands and tokens going?
You should maintain the customer feedback process on an ongoing basis to ensure you have a customer experience score for each scoring period. During the first few weeks, it is beneficial to use the Customer Experience stand each day. After that, you can reduce the usage to 1 or 2 days per week, ensuring you rotate the days of the week.
The Scores on the Board® to obtain customer experience feedback is tailored to the type of business environment in which the team operates. The Contact Centre Approach is used where staff and customers have phone-to-phone interaction.
The five parts system is implemented as follows:
1. Vision
A compelling team purpose involving the ideal customer experience is created by the team. This may involve both internal and external customer experience and result in two Score Boards and Visions.
2. Goals
For the contact centre approach goals are traditionally set for customer (internal and external) and staff experience. The Contact Centre environment is usually tracked and measured more extensively than most environments. As such, Operational Effectiveness Indicators usually remain as the current measures. The most effective operational measures within the teams control usually involve a focus on resolution rate, staff retention and / or absenteeism.
3. Feedback
Staff Experience
Manual Feedback or Electronic Feedback tools are used for the Contact Centre Approach. Staff Experience is designed to be anonymous.
Customer Experience
Phone based surveying for customer experience is commonly used where customer service and sales teams are providing phone based support.
- Outbound Contact – Customer Surveying may be undertaken using either the existing database of customer contacts or a Customer Referral Card. The Customer Referral Card is used to collect contact details where a help desk scenario may exist and there is no contact information for the customers is available on existing databases.
- The line manager, team leader or team champion would then make contact with the customers based on the agreed cycle.
- When making contact, an Introduction Script explaining the purpose of the contact and the Customer Feedback Question and Score options along with a comments option is used. The feedback is usually obtained via phone. Alternatively, mail or fax stream may also be used. Text messages may also be considered for the appropriate target market.
- The nominated team member calculates the score and summarises the suggestions onto a manual Team Score Card and Action Plan.
- Interactive Voice Response (IVR) – Customer feedback may be obtained via Interactive Voice Response. Where a contact centre environment exists, call transfers may occur at the completion of the call to a voice box requesting customer feedback. The operator confirms with the customer their interest in providing feedback. This is done by using a standard Introduction Script explaining the purpose of gathering feedback. The operator then transfers the customer if the customer agrees to participate.
- Alternatively – the Interactive Voice Response system is set to inform the customer at the commencement of the call that Customer Feedback is valued and that they may request a transfer to respond to the Customer Experience Survey.
- For some IVR systems, a score is automatically produced for the team based on the question asked. Feedback suggestions will be obtained either by an operator making direct contact with the customer or a voice mail message system. Scores and a summary of suggestions are presented to the team using the Team Score Card and Action Plan.
- A percentage of all the calls that your team handle is usually selected for customer experience feedback. Ideally greater than 10% or a total sample of more than 100 customers for each cycle will provide valid and actionable improvement feedback.
- Frequency of collecting customer feedback – One day per cycle is recommended for the Customer Experience survey. The customer experience questions are selected by the team. Questions reflect performance and behaviours that are within the control of the team. Questions can vary to meet the cycle and priorities decided by the team.
- Introduction scripts or standard templates for each team member should be used when introducing the feedback system to the customer. The Introductory Statement reflects either the Team’s Vision or the Leadership Team’s Vision of the ideal internal customer experience, and questions should directly relate to these.
- How would you rate the helpfulness our staff today?
- How would you rate the timeliness of our service today?
- How would you rate the knowledge of our staff today?
- How would you rate our ability to meet your needs today?
- How would you rate our responsiveness today?
- To keep this working well, the team leader or line manager should take care to monitor that the calls are spread across a range of times and ensure that everyone has a reasonable quota.
- Follow up a proportion of calls yourself with the customer as a checking mechanism – does the customer’s view of the call match with the team member’s view?
- Mystery shopper programs – If your business already operates a phone based Mystery Shopper Program, this is a useful tool using an independent source of feedback. It also provides you with information about your performance relative to other locations. However, it is not immediate. The Scores on the Board® tools provide you with customer experience scores on a day-by-day basis and allow you to make changes quickly and to see the impact of the team’s action plans on improving the customer experience.
- Changing the feedback questions – It is possible to select from a range of questions to seek feedback from your customers. Some examples that have been used are shown above. If your organisation has service standards or specific brand values and attributes these can easily be incorporated into what you ask customers about.
Operational Experience
Data should be obtained in the normal organisational way and entered onto the Team Scoreboard. The time cycle chosen for operational effectiveness may depend on the nature of the operational effectiveness being focused on and the availability of scoring data.
In any case, a SCORE card should be established and performance tracked in the same way as for staff experience and customer experience by using a template Team Scorecard and Action Plan. These traditionally involve Sales, Expenses or Quality based measures such as:
Revenue / Cost of Goods / Overheads / Expenses / Gross Profit / Net Profit / Product Sales / Quality / Quantity / Output / Compliance / Responsiveness / Timeliness / Productivity / Turnover / Absenteeism / Staff Competence
4. Gaps and 5. Actions
- The SCORE and the anonymous summary of issues is presented at the regular Scores on the Board™ team meeting. The summarised information separates “Issues within the Team’s control” and those “Issues not within the Team’s control”. This information is invaluable as it helps teams decide on appropriate priority issues for the cycle. Then Action Plans can be developed. Also issues that are outside their control can be escalated to more senior management or interdependent teams for attention and action.
- The team selects a couple of key actions for the cycle and then each team member identifies personal actions to support the team actions. The Team Actions are recorded on the Team Scoreboard.
Frequently asked questions about customer feedback in call centres
How credible are the results from the self scoring approach?
In our experience the majority of team members respond well to the trust element of the self scoring approach. In fact, they usually tend to score their service lower than their team leader or line manager normally would.
Could we use our call monitoring system instead of the self scoring approach?
By using a call monitoring system as a scoring mechanism, you take away the element of trust in your team members and their active participation in gathering feedback. You are more than likely going to create an environment of mistrust and suspicion amongst your team.
How do customers respond to the follow-up calls from the team leader or line manager?
In our experience across a range of call centres customers respond positively to a follow-up call from the team leader or line manager. They appreciate the effort you are taking to improve your service levels.
The Scores on the Board® Line Management Approach is used where managers are looking to improve performance across the business, through self-managed teams who control and manage their own vision, goals, feedback and actions to achieve their objectives and contribute to those of the entire business.
Most importantly, it is a system to facilitate and drive an increase in consistency and performance. Line Management use the System to model leadership and management best practice behaviours. Team members learn from the behaviours of their leaders and managers from executive teams down to front line teams.
1. Vision
The vision should comprise a compelling team purpose often involving the ideal customer experience along with team values and a picture of the future. This vision should inspire and motivate teams and individuals to take action and forms the basis from which strategy and the subsequent measures of success should be established. A vision can be created by the team or by the leader for the team.
2. Goals
In establishing the vision representing the organisational strategy, goals can be set in up to four areas to deliver short, medium and long term results. Best practice has demonstrated that specific and measurable goals should be established in a minimum of three key areas which are customer experience, staff satisfaction and organisational effectiveness.
The Service-Profit-Chain framework developed by the Service Management faculty at Harvard Business School shows that superior levels of staff satisfaction and engagement drives a differentiated customer experience which results in improved business performance and superior financial results.
3. Feedback
Feedback will be either Manual Feedback or Electronic Feedback
One of the fundamental principles of Scores on the Board® is that we measure how we are performing by way of a SCORE, in the same way as all sporting teams do. We therefore use simple tools which collect appropriate feedback and data and establish that SCORE. The approach for obtaining feedback is tailored to the type of business the team is operating in. Feedback will be either collected in a manual or electronic form in each key goal area. The GOAL areas would typically involve:
- Staff experience
- Customer experience
- Operational effectiveness
With operational effectiveness indicators, data should be obtained from existing organisational systems such as financial, sales or product reports. The feedback is necessary to track and measure performance against goals to establish gaps and subsequent action plans.
4. Gaps & 5. Action
Actions and revised goals require timelines that then form the cycle for continued review and improvement.
The Scores on the Board® approach for obtaining customer experience feedback is tailored to the type of business environment in which the team operates. The Sales Approach is used for account, relationship, sales and new business development managers who are responsible for growing and / or servicing a client base.
Customers or client groups are traditionally grouped into classifications based on products or services provided by your organisation. Classifications may include:
- Operational or executive stakeholders
- National or local clients
- Wholesale or retail clients
- Or a combination of each
For the most part, organisations already have a method of grouping clients to track productivity and most often financial performance through sales and related reporting.
Utilising existing or establishing new client classifications ensures that the Scores on the Board™ system can be effectively applied to practical groups. These groups can be aligned to relevant visions that represent their ideal customer experience. Subsequent goals, feedback and actions can then be targeted to meet with the specific needs of the client group.
The five part system is implemented as follows:
1. Vision
A compelling team purpose involving the ideal customer experience is created by the account management team. This may involve one team vision and / or a vision by client group or classification. Where multiple visions exist; goals, feedback and actions are set to each vision.
2. Goals
For the sales approach goals are traditionally set to the customer groups or classifications as well as staff experience. The Operational Effectiveness Indicators are usually obtained in the normal organisational way through sales, product and profitability reporting. These are usually the most effective operational measures within the sales team’s control.
3. Feedback
Staff Experience
Electronic Feedback is usually used for the Sales Approach and is designed to be anonymous. With account managers often on the road, as long as they have email and web access they are able to easily complete the feedback survey.
Customer Experience
Electronic or Manual Phone Based Feedback is also traditionally used for the Sales Approach and customers are asked to rate the team’s or their individual account manager’s performance on a regular basis.
With the Sales Approach it is also common for an initial ‘Research’ based survey to be used for Customer Feedback and results are then used to establish the customer vision and continued feedback questions for goal setting, gap analysis and action planning.
For all electronic feedback contact details are provided to the team at Bill Lang International and for each scoring period, the Scores on the Board® Support Team send an email linked to a web survey to the nominated customers.
The Scores on the Board® Support Team collate the results and send the nominated sales person or manager the customer experience scores out of 10 for relevant measures and a summary of suggestions for improvement.
This process protects the anonymity of the respondents and ensures that the internal support team gets the feedback summary report it needs without being overloaded with administrative work.
An automated online system is available as an alternative for organisations with a large number of teams using Scores on the Board®.
Frequency of collecting customer feedback – The Sales Approach usually involves a monthly cycle for the Customer Experience survey. The customer experience questions are selected by the team or individual. Questions reflect activities and services that are within the control of the team. Questions can vary to meet the cycle and priorities decided by the team.
Introduction scripts or standard templates for each team member should be used when introducing the feedback system to the customer. The Introductory Statement reflects either the Team’s Vision or the Individual’s Vision of the ideal customer experience.
Sample questions could include :
- How would you rate the quality of our services against those of our competitors?
- How likely would you be to refer us to your colleagues, family of friends?
- How would you rate the knowledge of our team?
- How would you rate our ability to meet your needs?
- How would you rate our responsiveness to your needs?
To keep this working well, the questions and objectives may become more specific to the team or individual being asked for feedback, such as the Sales Team, Account Manager, Business Development Manager or Pre-Sales Team.
Also the team leader or line manager should take care to communicate actions and outcomes back to the customer groups or classifications.
Operational Experience
Information can be sourced from the existing performance reporting systems and entered onto the Team Scoreboard. The time cycle chosen for operational effectiveness may depend on the nature of the operational effectiveness measure being focused on.
In each case, a SCORE card should be established and performance tracked in the same way as for staff experience and customer experience by using a template Team Scorecard & Action Plan. These traditionally involve Sales or Quality based measures such as:
Revenue / Cost of Goods / Overheads / Expenses / Gross Profit / Net Profit / Product Sales / Quality / Quantity / Output / Compliance / Responsiveness / Timeliness / Productivity / Turnover / Absenteeism / Staff Competence
4. Gaps and 5. Actions
The SCORE and the anonymous summary of staff and customer issues are presented at the regular Scores on the Board® team meeting.
The summarised information separates “Issues within the Team’s control” and those “Issues not within the Team’s control”. This information is invaluable as it helps teams decide on appropriate priority issues for the cycle. Then Action Plans can be developed.
Also issues that are outside their control can be escalated to more senior management or inter-department or cross-functional teams for attention and action.
The team and / or individuals select a couple of key actions for the cycle. With the Sales Approach there can be actions relevant to the whole team that require individual actions to support the team as well as individual actions for client specific groups.
The Team and / or Individual Actions are recorded on the Team Scoreboard.
Frequently asked questions about customer feedback for Sales Teams
How are our customers likely to react?
In our experience across a range of environments, the vast majority of customers respond positively and are more than willing to provide your team with feedback.
What is the response rate from our customers likely to be?
In our experience across a range of sales environments, the response rate from external customers is on average between 20% and 40%.
How long would we need to keep the customer feedback process going?
You should maintain the customer feedback process on an ongoing basis to ensure you have a customer experience score for each scoring period. The key is not to overload any one individual customer. Rotate the customers you are seeking feedback from with a focus on those customers who have had an interaction with an account manager or sales person during the period in question.
Maintaining Momentum
You probably got off to a great start – team members were enthusiastic, provided staff experience feedback, customer experience feedback was actively sought, suggestions were great, team meetings were motivating and productive. Over time however, you may have struggled to keep the momentum going. Sometimes a few key players take leave, someone gets sick, you get pulled onto an urgent project and are not around as much to lead the team. People may have stopped providing and seeking feedback, and may have found reasons not to attend the regular team meetings.
Overcoming this temporary inertia and maintaining the momentum of Scores on the Board® is one of the challenges you will face as a team leader or line manager. Momentum activities that our Leaders have found useful include the following:
‘Momentum Games’ you might like to try with your team. These include:
- Brainstorming
- Simultaneous interpretation
- A game of winning and losing
- Teachers and learners
- Digicon
‘Momentum Exercises’ are also available, whilst not exactly games, some of these exercises might be helpful to use with your teams to add interest and value to your Scores on the Board® team meetings:
- Team effectiveness
- Management effectiveness survey
- Setting team ground rules & establishing norms
(also a skills building session on reaching consensus) - Effective team member survey