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Company: The Brookeside Group, Acton, MA
Entry Submitted By: Walker Sands Communications
Company Description: The Brookeside Group is a training, management and consulting agency founded in 2003 by president Thomas M. Cates. Tom is passionate about helping companies build loyal, long-term customer relationships that increase revenue. The Brookeside Group has won numerous awards for its innovative training workshops that help companies develop and maintain excellent internal and external relationships.
Nomination Category: Solution Provider Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service or Call Center Consulting Practice of the Year

Nomination Title: The Brookeside Group: Consulting the Unknown

Tell the story about what this nominated organization has achieved since the beginning of July 2011 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

As a leader in customer relationship management, The Brookeside Group is always looking for innovative ways to help its clients reach new heights. Recently, Brookeside took a deep look inside the interworking of one of its largest clients, a global property insurer, and found one area in particular that needed an overhaul.

For the past 10 years, the client had mandated that all employees complete a 10-step customer service process, regardless of the customer’s size, potential deal value or the extent to which the customer even wanted to be engaged by the company. The process was long, cumbersome and had lost value. No one had a solution, including Brookeside.

However, knowing that something had to be done, the Brookeside team assembled a group of the company’s senior executives, account managers and account engineers – people from all levels of the organization – and put them up at a hotel for an intensive weekend of problem-solving. They looked at the group, and each other, and said, “We’re not leaving until we put our heads together and redesign this process.”

For Brookeside, traveling into the unknown as a consulting company was terrifying. Further, as a small company with less than 30 employees, Brookeside was tasked with revamping what would be an integral process for a large company.

At large organizations today, you often see consulting companies or senior management come in and say to the management teams, “Here’s the new model, now use it.” While that may be an easier way to reach a conclusion, Brookeside is founded on the principles of relationship building and collaboration. The team knew that in order to redesign the process successfully, input from all levels of the organization was crucial.

With the 10-step process in mind, the group focused on building excellent customer service skills, engaging the C-Suite and strengthening relationships so that the customer is truly engaged and the relationship is a two-way street. They made the process more circular and learned how to tailor the steps in order to meet the needs of each individual customer, while taking into consideration the established relationships.

The group worked hard to revamp the 10-step process, making it lean, efficient and as time went on, incredibly effective. For employees, it wasn’t simply about completing the steps to get it over with – it was about taking the feedback and insight and using it to establish a deeper relationship with their customers. According to attendees, the weekend was long and tiring but undoubtedly worthwhile.

In the end, the process focused not on getting customers to sign on the dotted line but on working with them to develop mutually beneficial relationships and achieve business goals together.

Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader of this nominated company:

Tom Cates is president and founder of The Brookeside Group, a Boston-based training, management and consulting agency focused on helping companies build loyal, profitable business relationships. Over the past decade, Tom has helped companies strengthen their relationships, turning customers into Trusted Advisors, or those that actively refer business back, have a higher share of spending and have a longer tenure. Tom is passionate about helping businesses build strong, mutually beneficial relationships. He earned his BAE from Penn State University and holds an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.