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Company: Rogers Business Care, Toronto, Canada
Entry Submitted By: Rogers Communications
Company Description: Rogers Communications Inc. is a diversified Canadian communications and media company with 3 primary lines of business. Rogers Wireless is Canada's largest wireless voice and data communications services provider. Rogers Cable is a leading Canadian cable services provider. Rogers Media is Canada's premier group of broadcast, sports, print and on-line media assets.
Nomination Category: Sales Awards Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Award for Innovation in Sales

Nomination Title: Service Team Meets the Sales and Revenue Challenge

Tell the story about your organization's innovations in sales or business development 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:

OUR CHALLENGE:

We needed to engage 900 service professionals to help grow our bottom line. Thisrequired new thinking and a change to our service culture. We needed to:

• Create sales capacity,

• Handle service and billing issues while preserving our revenue and reputation,

• Maintain customer satisfaction and reduce churn.

OUR SOLUTION:

We implemented a new metric and ‘Alliance’ coaching to quickly build new capability. Then we rallied behind two phrases, “Balance Approached” and “Bridging to a Sale”. Here is how it worked.

Alliance Coaching – We created alliances of 3-4 managers who worked together with shared goals. Each had different strengths in Service or Sales or Cost or Retention. Consultants had their primary manager for HR, but for specific skills they now had a specialist coach. Everyone worked together.

Taking a Balanced Approach – We encouraged doing the right thing by our customers, while protecting revenue – to find the balance. We created a metric that showed how each interaction impacted the customers’ total value (our bottom line). Consultants then understood their impact and were able to engage the right Alliance coach to sharpen their skills.

Here are some sample behavior changes:

• In service, when a customer calls for credit:

o We probe for greater understanding and offer appropriate enhanced services, giving customer value, but reducing the cash impact.

o We review their history for repeat occurrences, re-educate and negotiate a lessor credit encouraging customers to be accountable and take preventive action.

• In Retention & Loyalty, we retain our business at less cost and, where our competitors are active, win that business as well.

Bridging to a Sale – We embraced the belief that great service includes knowing when to bridge to a sale. Using service skills, we probe to understand our customer’s business. We then recommend solutions to enhance their wireless experience. Our employees have become trusted advisors and this has improved our customer relationships.

These changes were supported by goal setting, communication, coaching, contests, sales & service rewards, and recognition. This simple recipe worked because we acted together, with continual focus on our goals.

FANTASTIC RESULTS

• We increased sales 27% YoY (year over year), contributing $107Million in revenue

• We increased up-sell by 50%

• We reduced credits 22% YoY, saving $6.5Million, while continuing to do the right thing by our customers

• Despite stiff competition, we achieved our lowest churn rate ever. We saved 45,000 customers - $50M in life-time value

• We reduced our cost of save by 34% YoY, adding $1.5M to our bottom line

• With high spirits we won the 50 Most Engaged Workplaces award (2nd year)

• We improved customer satisfaction by 7.5% YoY and won World-Class Service awards (3rd year).

With new thinking, innovative ideas, and the talents of our team, we have evolved. Our people have integrated sales & revenue protection into our service experience in a way that keeps us ahead of the competition, improves customer satisfaction, and contributes to our bottom line.

Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated customer service organization:

Heather Arthur is a Director in Business Customer Operations. She is accountable for all customer-facing operations for small and medium business across Canada. Heather manages the customer lifecycle from sales to service, technical support, retention and loyalty. With 16 years experience as a service leader, Heather’s success is founded on her ability to engage the passion and imagination of those around her and build a service culture that ensures success. Heather guides a team of over 500 frontline consultants plus 3rd party suppliers to reach audacious goals.