Canada Post

Company: Canada Post, Ottawa, Canada
Company Description: Canada Post is a major contributor to the Canadian economy generating almost $5.5B in GDP and $9B in labour income. With a 150-year history, Canada Post is the country’s leading delivery organization, serving 32 million consumers through 6,700 post offices across the country. Every day, we deliver 40 million messages to over 14 million addresses – a number that increases by 240,000 every year.
Nomination Category: Individual Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best Executive - Non-Profit or Government - More Than 2,500 Employees

Nomination Title: Janet LeBlanc, Director, Customer Value Management

Describe for the judges the activities and accomplishments of the nominated executive during the eligibility period (up to 500 words):

Canada Post is in the business of connecting Canadians. Our 72,500 employees
work around the clock to deliver millions of pieces of mail, parcels and messages
every day to every corner of our vast country. Focusing on daily operational
requirements had led Canada Post to be inward looking - cultivating an ‘inside-out’
culture where the needs of the company were put before the customer experience.
Furthermore, Canada Post has traditionally and successfully operated in a
bureaucratic environment with very little competition; however, with emerging
communication technologies and multinational courier companies, the world has
become much smaller and competition for business more fierce.

Company executives realized that if it was to be successful in the future, it
needed to turn its focus outward; making customer needs a priority and building
flexibility into its business to respond more quickly to a rapidly evolving market.

As a result, Canada Post embarked on a journey to bring customers to the
forefront of its business. In a little more than three years, Canada Post has
defined what customers value most, measured and tracked weekly performance in the
marketplace, and identified customer-value metrics and competitive benchmarks
to drive transformation and change across the organization. Today, its Customer
Value Management program guides business strategies, helps focus redesign
efforts, and shapes employee incentives and rewards. Its successful
implementation is a major achievement, moving Canada Post closer to its goal of
becoming a world-class provider of physical and electronic delivery services. 

Janet LeBlanc, director of Canada Post’s Customer Value Management program
has led the transformation of a once inwardly focused and operationally-driven
government organization to one that believes in putting the customer first. She
diligently works to understand the end-to-end customer experience, integrate the
findings into everyday action planning, and ensure that every employee in the
organization, from shop-floor supervisor to senior executive, contributes to a high-
quality customer experience. With a nation-wide and primarily unionized workforce
and one of the most extensive retail networks in the country, the task is daunting
yet the results speak for themselves.

Janet’s leadership has led Canada Post to win three international awards namely
an International Business Award in the area of Best Customer Service
Department/Organization, a 1to1 Impact Award for Organizational Transformation
and a World Mail Award in the category of Best Customer Service In addition,
Janet has been named to the prestigious position of Customer Champion, joining a
world-wide community of top-level executives who are the voice of the customer in
their organization and whose efforts help their firms tie customer strategies to
bottom-line results.  The program she’s built is acknowledged throughout the
customer value community as a best-in-class program, earning her an invitation
from Dr. Bradley Gale, a pre-eminent expert on customer value, to join his
international Advisory Board. Dr. Gale will be including a case study about Janet’s
successful transformational change initiatives at Canada Post in his upcoming
fourth book.

List the URLs (web addresses) of any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that you would like the judges to see that support your entry. IMPORTANT: List each URL on a separate line, begin each URL with http://, and enclose each URL in square brackets. For example, [http://www.yourcompany.com/pressrelease.html]:

http://www.1to1media.com/view.aspx?DocID=30805#a9

http://customervaluenetwork.com/portal/?page_id=2

Provide a brief biography of the nominated executive (up to 100 words):

Janet holds a Masters of Business Administration and is a sought-after guest
speaker. She sits on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Customer Strategist
Journal. She started her career as an advocate for the advancement of women in
the workplace creating a women’s business network for young women. She
persuaded the Conference Board of Canada to write a series on women at work for
which Janet was a featured writer. Janet was an adjunct professor of marketing at
the University of Ottawa for over a decade, and published a Canadian best-seller
on children in sport, now available in three languages.