In 2013, a large hotel franchising company completed the largest reorganization ever in the history of its existence. The team that was impacted the most was the field operations team. This reorganization decreased their total headcount by 20%. This meant that their individual customer portfolios increased by as much as 30%. In addition to their portfolio size increase, they were given additional responsibilities that once belonged to another team that had been let go after the reorganization.

Transforming this team to be able to operate in their new environment was no easy task. Not only was there a significant amount of emotional distress amongst the team, there were many process changes that needed to be mapped out in order to make the new business model work. New processes meant new technology was needed to support them. There was no way the team could manage their portfolio and meet revenue growth targets without the right technology.

To start, I focused on listening – to the management team and then to members of the individual field operations team. Gathering their various perspectives gave me a sense of what parts of their new responsibilities will need extra care and attention. I also ensured I had all the facts of their new work responsibilities (customer portfolio size, locations, performance stats, services provided – existing and new, etc). Taking all these facts, I then worked with them to map out new processes and proposed new work responsibilities that would allow them to effectively and efficiently manage their new portfolios. Including them in these exercises ensured I had not only buy-in from management but from the field team members themselves. Seeing visually how their new roles would work (step by step) helped immensely to ease concern on their ability to operate in this new environment.

The technology we used to support their new set of work responsibilities was Salesforce.com CRM, Microstrategy for reporting, and Web-Ex. These tools aided individual field team members to prioritize their workload and ensure they were focusing their attention on the customers that would yield the most ROI for their time spent. Because of the portfolio size increase, we knew we’d have to modify the way in which services were to be provided to their customers – e.g. not all customers would receive the same time of service (which historically had been the case). We gave the team the authority to segment their customers into groups and then apply the most effective type of service for that individual customer.

The major service changes that were piloted and then implemented:
• “Virtual” visits: We gave the team web-ex licenses. It’s an easy to use web-based conference tool. This allowed them to conduct multiple meetings with customers in a single day rather than what historically was an in-person meeting. In-person meetings allowed for only one a day. This tool accommodated multiple meetings in a single day.
• Automated all written communication with customers: I used Salesforce.com to record the customer visits and then to generate customer specific communication and follow-up action lists specific to their individual needs.
• Implemented regional workshops: Most workshops addressed customer quality. I had the team invite customers that needed this service and we honed in on the types of issues they needed help with the most.

These service model changes, have not only driven up customer quality scores (10% lift in quality in 3 months’ time) but revenue is expected to increase in the millions. In addition, field team morale and engagement has gone from being one of the worst in the company after the large reorganization in 2013 to now being one of the best.