Client Service Ideas? It’s in the Doing.

Hoisted from Comments: Edi Osborne, Kevin Phillips.

Four Tough Client Service Problems: And dozens of possible solutions from staffers…

Osborne

…is getting a lot of buzz.

But some of the best has come from two, coincidentally, West Coast consultants.

Edi Osborne of MentorPlus writes: “I love all the ideas the group generated. I have only one thing to add. All the questions are more easily answered when you are only dealing with ideal clients.”

And she links to this checklist  to help choose the right clients in the first place:

Kevin Phillips, Director of Consulting Services, ProHorizons Network Inc., writes:

 

Phillips

There are a lot of great ideas here. The only problem is that lots of great ideas are impossible to execute.

Developing excellence in client service requires a change in organizational culture. And culture change is very difficult.

As valuable as a brainstorming session might be in shaking loose new ideas, of greater value is landing on identifying one or two behaviors that will move the entire organization in a new direction.

If the firm is profitable, it is probably doing a lot of things right. If the firm is human, there is probable one or two adjustments one could make to make it even more profitable. The trick is to identify them.

Before brainstorming solutions, it might be helpful to invest some energy in really understanding the firm’s culture.

To get at culture ask these questions:

  • What behaviors do we repeat over and over again out of habit that limits the quality of our customer service?
  • In what ways to do each each staff member feel constrained, limited or shut down? Where do these experiences overlap?
  • Who sets the cultural norm around here? And what benefit does the norm-setter gain at the expense of better customer service?

It’s China, Stupid!

Grant Thornton International’s revenues drop 9%.

But the real news is that for the first time the US and UK combined make up less than half of GTI’s fees. That’s “hardly surprising given the crisis everyone has been grappling with,” Gavin Hinks writes at Accountancy Age:

But its the shift in the balance of power that is fascinating. China and Hong Kong has for the first time become one of GTI’s top ten performing territories… Are we looking at a time when those territories are so successful that GTI has to run the organization out of Beijing? HSBC’s chief executive Michael Geoghegan has just relocated to Hong Kong to be closer to the bank’s center of main interest. How long before other multinational CEOs find they have to do the same thing?”

Financial Director has the rest:

Revenues for GTI’s 96 member firms stood at $3.6 billion for the year ended Sept. 30, 2009,  compared to about $4 billion in 2008.  Assurance services fell 4% to $1.6 billion.

“Grant Thornton, like all businesses, saw its revenue hindered by a difficult global economy in 2009, However, I am encouraged by these results. We knew the last 12 months would be challenging and many member firms had to make tough decisions to cut costs and refocus their businesses,” said new GTI CEO Ed Nusbaum.