Tag Archive for: Dispute Resolution

Raising Business Maturity: Alex’s COE Journey - Quality Business ServicesQuality Business Services

Raising Business Maturity: Alex’s COE Journey

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Alex’s background is typical of many COE graduates as she had worked her way up from being ‘on the tools’. She had excellent instincts for operational excellence but lacked formal leadership training. Embarking on the Core Operational Excellence leadership development program taught Alex the science behind her instincts and the confidence to further develop with the 70/20/10 learning approach. When she was promoted into a large leadership role following an acquisition, she sensed many gaps in the two business areas that had come together. Over the following six months during her COE training, she progressively identified and addressed these gaps, raising business maturity and helping her team step up.

THE ISSUES

The many challenges Alex found were consistent with a low maturity business:

  • Misaligned teams 
  • Some operational processes had nil process documentation and key person risk
  • Several teams had limited or no process data
  • Limited engagement with stakeholders (siloed)
  • No business plan or monthly reviews
  • Perception of insufficient staff – in reality, too much time spent on waste activity
  • Few employees had active development plans and succession gaps existed 

ACTIONS TAKEN

This had to be a team effort so Alex engaged her leaders from the outset to gradually lift the business maturity with numerous actions:

  • Aligned roles, objectives and operating rhythms 
  • Developed a business plan with a monthly review mechanism
  • Team meetings run with agendas, minutes and follow-up actions
  • Closed gaps in process documentation
  • Implemented individual development plans to address key skill gaps and reduce succession gaps
  • Commenced manual data tracking on priority areas
  • Established regular stakeholder communications
  • Focused improvements on several inefficient processes

RESULTS

The results that Alex achieved within SIX MONTHS are incredible:

  • Cycle time on two core processes reduced 70%
  • Increased employee engagement
  • Continuous improvement driven by customer feedback and structured risk assessments
  • 100% succession coverage with no key person risks
  • Process improvements reduced waste equivalent to 1 FTE
  • Culture change with leaders working as a team, delivering on their plans
  • Interest reduction of $40k pa from reduced refund events 
  • Team are increasingly using data to separate fact from fiction

To this day, Alex still keeps her ½ day per week for working on the business – there is no going back!

RAISING BUSINESS MATURITY IN YOUR ORGANISATION

If you need your leaders to step up, raising business maturity and overall performance while reducing risks, click here to learn more about Core Operational Excellence and QBS’s other development programs.

Transforming Dispute Resolution: Tim’s COE Journey - Quality Business ServicesQuality Business Services

Transforming Dispute Resolution: Tim’s COE Journey

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As the manager of an internal dispute resolution team in the financial services sector, Tim was a passionate advocate for his organisation’s customers. Any complaints that weren’t resolved within the various business lines became the responsibility of his team.  If his team are unable to resolve the dispute within prescribed timeframes it is escalated to AFCA at significant financial and reputational cost.  Furthermore, a recent acquisition had added further complexity to an already complex business, selling various products through multiple channels.

Tim needed to sustainably improve the dispute resolution process for the benefit of all parties and when QBS’s Core Operational Excellence leadership training program came along, it was the perfect vehicle to achieve this.  He took responsibility to analyse, optimise and improve his own function using proven operational excellence concepts.  

THE ISSUES

Through the lens of operational excellence, Tim was able to identify the priority issues that needed to be addressed:

  • Varied, undocumented complaint processes across the business
  • Insufficient dispute resolution (DR) process documentation – in addition to causing variation, this also placed a reliance on the experienced team members to support the less experienced
  • Highly variable DR team capability
  • Skill gaps within DR team 

ACTIONS TAKEN

With the above issues in mind, Tim was able to drive specific actions to sustainably shift the needle for his business and team:

  • Documented current business complaint processes
  • Dispute resolution processes agreed and documented (by the team, for the team)
  • Skills matrix created to prioritise skill gaps to be closed with team members achieving Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals accreditation
  • Changed the process to ensure team member speak with the customer at the outset and used open ended questions
  • Developed templates and increased standardisation for common complaint types
  • Increased collaboration within the business 

THE RESULTS

The results that Tim achieved within just seven months are astounding:

  • Time to resolve complaints decreased from a median of 22 days down to 17 days 
  • Reduction in complaints escalated to AFCA from 72% to 34% (similar total number of complaints).   Each complaint that escalates to AFCA costs ~$3,150.  This saved the company around $130k in one month alone!
  • Productivity gains from less effort expended on each complaint resulted in 1 FTE headcount reduction
  • Happier customers, happy regulator, happy business!

Next frontier? Work with the business to reduce the number of complaints!

This is a fabulous example of how leaders can improve their operational performance without engaging external consultants – it is usually achieved through a handful of relatively small actions to address the specific challenges in that area. In addition, the skills Tim learnt will be with him throughout his career.

If you would like your leaders to turn their function around without engaging expensive consultants, click here to learn more about Core Operational Excellence and QBS’s other development programs.