The Impact Room – Jo Causon CEO Institute of Customer Service

We were delighted to see Jo Causon, Chief Executive Officer of Institute of Customer Service in the Impact Room recently. Jo joined Hannah Louise Cox to share some insight and thoughts about customer service, customer demands, ease of customer service, challenges, transparency, communications, opportunities.

What do the organisations that do well with customer service do differently, ethics, value.

What needs to change in the UK to help our customers feel happier and improve customer experience.

The role the boardroom has to play in delivering great customer service, setting the purpose and legacy.

The Impact Room – Where exceptional, diverse and impactful leadership and wisdom is shared.

#instituteofcustomerservice#jocauson#customerservice#customerstrategy#boardrooms#customerlegacy#customerpurpose#theimpactroom

Hannah Louise Cox, Practice Lead, Douglas Jackson. Helping CEO’s and Senior Executives | Retained Search | Diversity & Inclusion | Senior Leadership | High Growth | Technology | Large Scale Transformation | ⭐ CX Professionals List 2021, CX Magazine

A high-end retained executive search firm exclusively focused on consumer centric business, delivering high performance, diverse, impactful leadership.

What’s Next For Planning – Chief Planning Officer?

As we know planning functions are critical to success across all business and operations and the recent changes and adaptations we have had to make have proven testament to this, accelerating the importance of planning across many a business and boardroom.

Businesses are currently going through a significant amount of change and it is important that the planning teams support business leaders, C-suite executives and owners through their strategic decision-making process.

So where should planning functions sit? I see lots of organisations with Planning reporting to operations or, finance but these functions have their own agenda and targets. For Planning functions and leaders to get the best possible results it should work with both of these functions not for them surely?.

Do you have an Inner Cheerleader or Inner Critic?

Do you have an inner cheerleader, or an inner critic?

Do you have nagging thoughts that you’re not good enough? This negative, self-critical voice can undermine how we feel about ourselves, our goals and our effectiveness in life and work.

I have always been a big believer in mindset but never more so than over the last 12 months, when most of us have had our lives turned upside down by so many elements which are completely out of our control.

This week I was invited to an event where Major Sandy Hennis FRGS was speaking.  Sandy is an Army reservist. She started out as a radio technician and achieved the rank of Corporal. After that she went to Sandhurst and commissioned back into the Royal Signals. She was in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sandy was also part of the Ice Maiden expedition.  The first female team to ski across the Antarctic continent using muscle power alone in 2017/18.

Sandy spoke about her journey and about some of the challenges she faced;

Diversity through recruitment

Are you considering a more diverse, inclusive recruitment strategy?

In the CIPD Resourcing and Talent Management Survey for 2020, two in five organisations have recruited a more diverse workforce over the last 12 months, compared with the previous year, however, their findings also suggest that most could improve the inclusivity of their recruitment processes through a more comprehensive approach that includes measures to eliminate bias.

These findings are mirrored by McKinsey & Company, in their third report on a case for Diversity; Diversity wins: How inclusion matters. The report states that they have seen ‘a stronger business case for diversity, but slow progress overall’. Since 2014 the data has seen uplifts from 15-20% on executive team female representation in the US and UK, yet globally, just a one percentage point from 2017 to 2019, with over one third of the companies having no women at all on their executive teams.

Even in those organisations who have adopted and achieved a more diverse board, leadership, or workforce, employee and leadership sentiment provided new insights into how inclusion matters.

The McKinsey data suggests that ‘Companies with more than 30 percent women executives were more likely to outperform companies where this percentage ranged from 10 to 30’ and in the case of ethnic and cultural diversity, their business-case findings are equally compelling, ‘with the likelihood of outperformance continues to be higher for diversity in ethnicity than for gender.’

As with all business strategies much of the challenge comes down to classical change management. Whilst having targets to achieve improved diversity are a start, without inclusion the numbers can quickly collapse and all the good work to attract a more diverse talent pool and workforce can be lost.

If you are looking to improve your diversity through recruitment, help reduce unconscious bias and have a more inclusive workforce, I might have something that will help, please do get in touch.

Michelle Ansell is a Managing Partner at Douglas Jackson, a high-end retained executive search firm exclusively focused on consumer centric business, delivering high performance, diverse, impactful leadership.

When Exceptional Leadership Matters…

Tel: 0345 620 9720

michelle@douglas-jackson.com

http://www.douglas-jackson.com

The skill or the will…

I read an interesting article recently from the Wall Street Journal. ‘You’re Next Boss Might Be More of a Coach Than a Dictator”.

Well, of course, I am not sure a lot of modern thinking leaders today would still be classed as dictators, although I am sure we can all still highlight more than a few with these traits, but the article is certainly in line with conversations we have been having for some time with HR Directors, CEOs COOs and CCOs who are thinking and talking more about their future leaders and asking what might be missing…

They may have the skill, but do they have the will?

Resilience, Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence (EQ and SQ) may have always been on the business agenda, but in recent months and years with the emotional health and wellbeing of our colleagues becoming increasingly prominent in our ongoing strategy and priorities more businesses are looking at their talent acquisition and development strategies to highlight and select for higher levels of EQ SQ and resilience.

Top 20 CX Stars

So incredibly proud that both myself and Hannah Louise Cox were nominated for and have now been listed in the Top 20 of the CX Stars 2021. This is the second year running we have both been featured across the Customer Experience community by leading publication Customer Experience Magazine.

Douglas Jackson were also one of only three businesses to have two entries to feature and alongside brands including Ipsos Mori, Forresters, Kantar, Octopus Energy, BT, Hitachi, HSBC, AkzoNobel, Microsoft, Medallia and many more.

Developing Extraordinary Talent and Great Leaders

‘If you had an incredibly high number of brilliant leaders in your business right now, what difference would it make to the culture, to the environment and to the results that your business were getting?’

This was just one of the questions asked by @Elke Edwards from Ivyhouse on our live event on Extraordinary Leadership for 2021 and beyond.

In this short two minute clip of Elkes’ introduction, she asks some searching questions:

Customer Director Report 2020

Is your Customer Experience where it needs to be?

Has your biggest competitor hired a Chief Customer Officer and you have little to no idea what the role means and how to best get value out of hiring one?

Are your Customer Service and/ or Customer Experience functions waning, or if we are honest, have they ever had the right tools to be effective anyway?

What if you are a technology company and are thinking about Customer Success and how having this function may help you and your business to perform better? But… you believe it to be a bit of a ‘buzzword’ and so haven’t yet made the investment…

We have something to help! Click here to download our Customer Director Report 2020 where you can find out the answers with regards to the above, and:

Merry Christmas and Christmas Opening 2020

Our Offices will close on Thursday 24th December at 12 noon and re-open on Monday 4th January 2021 at 9am.

During this time members of the team will be dialling in to collect messages and be able to access emails. 

If you are attending an interview, or, need to speak with any of the team urgently then you should already have all of your individual consultants personal contact details but if not, please call and leave a message on: 0345 620 9720 or email; mail@douglas-jackson.com and someone will get back to you. 

If your call and message is not urgent, a member of the team will be back in touch with you in the New Year.

We would like to wish you and yours a Merry Christmas and a Safe, Happy New Year.

See you in 2021.

Planning Your Virtual Talent Acquisition Strategy?

If you are planning your virtual talent acquisition strategy, what will you do differently?

Whether you will be doing virtual, a mix of interactions, or socially distanced interviews.

Our free guide will help you avoid some of the top pitfalls for chasing away top talent and help you plan for a more successful outcome.

We have created an ebook on How to Create a Successful Virtual Hiring Strategy and are able to offer it to you for free.

In this helpful ‘How to’ guide you will learn:

– How to plan your virtual strategy

– How to attract and engage top tier talent

– How to manage the virtual hiring process

– What changes to make when virtually hiring

– How to avoid losing top talent to your competitors

– How to improve the success and retention of your new hires

Start learning how to develop a really successful hiring strategy, saving you time and money, helping you secure top talent

Claim Your Free Copy

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The UK National Contact Centre Conference 2020

This week I had the pleasure of attending the UK National Contact Centre Conference with the CCMA.

This is a long standing commitment and much anticipated event, always a highlight in the calendar as we make our way to the British Library for an informative, engaging day with a wide range of customer service and contact centre leaders and Directors.

This year, of course was a little different as the event moved to an online digital venue but the day did not disappoint and had as usual a great deal to offer.

Leigh Hopwood, CEO of the CCMA kicked us off and introduced our first speak Amy Cashman, CEO Insights Division UK and Ireland, Kantar.

I am always fascinated by the research, which for today was proven true across many of the day’s presentations.

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How You and Your Leaders Can Emerge Stronger and More Successful

If you are like many of the customer and employee focused business leaders and HR Directors we are talking to, resilience and the ability to attract and develop resilient leaders is critical at this time.

We have been speaking with a number of business leaders, CEO’s, CCO’s, COO’s, and HR Directors about the resilience of their leadership team.

Having resilient leaders at the moment is critical for you to achieve success, to make money, save money, lead your teams and colleagues.

What if you do not feel you have enough resilience in your leadership team?

Maybe you are asking how do I recruit for resilience?

How do I measure resilience in our leadership team?

Returning to the office…Covid Recovery for business…

If you are like many customer led business leaders you will be considering getting at least some of your team back to the office in the coming weeks, or months.

Are you thinking about the key considerations for getting your team back to the office?

As we knew this subject was something a number of leaders were considering and asking about in our Customer Director Network, a virtual collaboration platform where Customer Service Directors, Customer Experience Directors, COO’s and CCO’s come to share and collaborate with their peers on challenges and opportunities, Executive Search Consultant Hannah Louise Cox organised a video interview with Customer Experience Director at Vanarama Dan Eddie on ‘getting your people back to the office successfully’.

Click on the image which will take you to the full video.

Basketball, Burgers and Resilient Leadership.

Resilience and resilient leadership.

In the last few weeks I have watched both The Last Dance on Netflix and The Founder on Amazon.

Basketball and Burgers, two seemingly unrelated subjects, neither of which I am particularly keen on, yet I found both riveting.

The Last Dance, for those of you have not seen it is centred around the Chicago Bulls and the team in 1997, Michael Jordan and the team allowed a film crew to follow them as they went for their sixth NBA title in eight seasons. 

Digital Online Innovation For The Digital Experience Awards 2020

It was a pleasure, again, to be involved in this years’ #UKDXAwards .

It wasn’t until I received my logos and badges from the Awards International team that I realised I’ve judged at 11 of these awards now across the series! I always come away from these events having realised plenty of value from me being involved; from the insight and knowledge gained first hand by learning different businesses innovations, to also learning best practise and excellence in the use of technology and people engagement, and it is always a joy to see how passionate people are about their work, their people, and their organisations! The events are always so upbeat and uplifting. Very enjoyable!