Employees reported to feel clarity and confidence in their expectations for delivery of customer service.
After the delivery of our training Foxtons' customer service reviews on Trustpilot soared to 4.8 out of 5 which is regarded as 'Excellent'.
We saw a 23% increase in employee engagement after working with employees at all levels within Foxtons.
The Challenge
Foxtons had no measurement or definition of what ‘great service’ looked like. Fran felt they were brilliant at training people how to sell but never really sat down and talked about the skills and the behaviours linked to service. ‘We didn’t really have a service culture and we didn’t talk about it. We had landlords and tenants, not customers. We didn’t have customer journeys – instead we had processes, which we did very efficiently, but there was definitely something missing,’ said Fran. In addition, a lack of confidence was affecting performance. Foxtons’ people didn’t feel like they were empowered. There was a lack of confidence around decision making, when to escalate and when to take ownership. It really impacted employee engagement and how they felt doing the job.
Accelerator’s training for the wider team didn't just focus on the lesson plan or boxes to be ticked. There were some sessions where, if the content hit a vein with the teams, we would just stop and really dig into it. Fran felt this approach was critical: ‘There were times when quite a lot needed to be unpicked and that was probably the most powerful thing that we did’
The Solution
The journey was in three key stages. Firstly, we conducted focus groups with Foxtons’ people to determine what was working and what wasn’t. Then we brought in some of Accelerator’s guiding principles that were sent out in online questionnaires to people and stakeholders all over the business, to really identify which phrases resonated with them.
From this, 12 key statements were developed that became the agreed Foxtons Service Style. Fran felt this was the critical foundation to shape the required change: ‘We could see a way forward towards the third element, which was how to make this part of our culture as well’. We approached it in two ways – bottom up and top down. We talked a lot about the perceptions of Foxtons’ people, how they perceived customers, their own roles and values. The team leaders were trained on why the changes were so important and time was spent developing them on how to give feedback, including application of powerful methodologies like Transactional Analysis. Fran said: ‘Our people were far more open to it than we anticipated, taking it to the next level to impact our customers as well’.
Accelerator’s training for the wider team didn’t just focus on the lesson plan or boxes to be ticked. There were some sessions where, if the content hit a vein with the teams, we would just stop and really dig into it. Fran felt this approach was critical: ‘There were times when quite a lot needed to be unpicked and that was probably the most powerful thing that we did’
