Dealing with Stakeholder Conflict
A Global Customer Service Summit
A global corporation has hired your firm to improve its customer service operations. Each region handles customer service locally, resulting in inconsistent service experiences for customers doing business across regions. The corporation wants a consistent customer experience, drawing on the best customer service practices from each region. Each manager believes their region has the best customer service in the company.
In the first discovery meeting, you ask the regional managers how a customer accesses service. The Asia, Middle East, and Africa regions provide customers with a mobile app that can open a live chat with a customer service rep. Latin America offers customers a knowledge base to search for quick answers. If the customer doesn't find the answer, s/he can start a live chat or call with a local service rep. North America and Europe offer toll-free numbers that route customer calls into local call centers.
North America expresses interest in Latin America’s knowledge base. They would need it translated into English. Europe likes the idea of the knowledge base, but they want to offer it in the customer’s native language. The corporate information technology director does not want to maintain multiple knowledge bases in different languages.
You inform the managers they can have a multilingual knowledge base with Salesforce Service Cloud. The Europe and the Americas managers like the idea and ask the Asia, Middle East, and Africa managers if they would like to join them in adopting a global knowledge base. Each manager politely declines. They want to continue providing customer service with the mobile apps. You ask to see the app to understand the benefits it provides. The Asia manager gives a brief demonstration.
Rogue Players Emerge
In the next meeting, you demonstrate a proof of concept mobile app that works with Service Cloud. The demo shows how it can deliver the benefits of the client’s mobile app. The Asia manager thanks you for the demo. He then says that the Asia, Africa and Middle East regions have agreed to persuade corporate to keep their mobile apps. They want no part of the new solution from your firm.
The corporate information technology director tells them they can’t keep their mobile apps. The Africa manager says that’s not up to the IT director. The IT director reminds them that their mobile apps are near their end of life, and corporate will no longer support them after that. The Asia manager says they will find technical resources to continue supporting the apps. The IT director becomes angry, saying that violates company policy.
You intervene, first acknowledging the disagreement, then politely informing the managers they will not resolve it in this meeting. After the meeting, you inform the client’s account manager about the dispute. The account manager appreciates how you handled it and contacts the client’s VP of customer service. She doesn’t sound surprised by the dispute and says she’ll deal with it.
A Peace Offering
The following week, you get specifications for a mobile customer service app from the client’s IT manager in Asia. The Africa and Middle East managers have agreed to the same specifications for the app. You contact the Asia IT manager with questions about the specifications. You ask her about the benefits the app provides. She brings the Asia customer service manager on the call, who shares feedback they have gotten from customers.
Most of the feedback asks for the app to work a certain way. You translate these feature requests into business needs that will benefit their customers. You elicit customer feedback from the Middle East and Africa regions and discover additional business needs.
The development team builds a working prototype of the mobile service app, which you demonstrate to the regional managers and the VP of customer service. The Asia, Africa, and Middle East managers are pleasantly surprised at how the app meets their customers’ needs more than they expected. You give credit to the regional service managers for providing customer feedback.
The Americas managers ask if the mobile app could offer self-service with a simple knowledge base search. Having anticipated that request, you show how a customer can verbally ask the app about a topic. The app shows knowledge base articles matching the topic. The Europe and Americas managers now want to offer the mobile app to their customers, while the Asia, Middle East, and Africa managers like customer self-service with the knowledge base.
The customer service VP requests a meeting with the account manager. She wants to increase the scope of the project to offer a high-quality, consistent customer service experience for their customers around the world. She joins the regional managers in appreciation of your efforts toward realizing that vision.
When stakeholders have conflicts about the nature of a business need, propose a solution if you can. Otherwise, escalate the disagreement to a management advocate who can resolve it.
