2022 brings Parallaxx to a new level of communication with our Clients and Stakeholders. As we navigated Covid during 2020 and 2021, the difference in methods of communication between our clients and ourselves was highlighted. Seeing this as an opportunity rather than an obstacle, we took on the challenge to find some key areas that we could improve upon.
Generally, direct communication channels exist between the customer and internal stakeholders – usually our consultants, training team, project managers or traffic engineering department. That’s all well and good, but who monitors or oversees the relationship between that department, or person within Parallaxx, and ensures overall client satisfaction and quality of service?
At Parallaxx, the person that elevates our engagement with our clients is our dedicated Customer and Quality Manager.
We acknowledged what the traditional role of a ‘customer manager’ was and chose to expand it to include a focus on the quality of our services.
Since the implementation of this role, our Customer and Quality Manager has assisted in the development of our internal practices and metrics with the wider team to help support client needs. This role is focused on proactively looking out for our clients’ businesses and suggesting new and innovative ways to keep them succeeding with Parallaxx as their chosen TTM supplier.
Over the past year, our Customer and Quality Manager has worked closely with the Parallaxx management team to generate two new key processes: Periodic Business Reviews (or PBRs) conducted annually with clients, and a Continual Improvement process/system to generate tangible and meaningful outcomes from feedback generated by not only the PBRs, but feedback received internally from our clients and wider team. Both implementations focus on building authentic and meaningful relationships with our clients, in which we genuinely listen to their feedback and act on it accordingly.
PBRs consist of our Customer and Quality Manager arranging one on one meetings with our clients to seek genuine, unfiltered feedback. This meeting intentionally removes the consultant or other Parallaxx members and allows the Customer and Quality Manager the ability to sit impartially between the two companies while conducting the meeting. By doing this, we can genuinely assess our client’s feedback. This helps to ensure that we are not only meeting their requirements and adjusting practises to assist them, but are building robust, authentic relationships with as many of our clients as possible.
But what do we do with the information gathered during a PBR? Its lovely to sit with a client, have lunch or a coffee, but where does the feedback go after its gathered?
This is where our Continual Improvement Process (CIP) comes in to play. We not only created a process, but developed a system to support any feedback received from our clients and stakeholders – good, bad or ugly. Typically, feedback will come from a PBR or a consultant who operates daily with our clients, the CIP process allows us the ability to input data (feedback) assign it to a party and then take measurable steps to continually improve our services (or resolve issues our clients may be facing). Once an entry has been completed in the CIP system, it goes into a bank of information that we regularly report on, providing Parallaxx the ability to see trends in our data and improve or monitor specific parts of the business. In a nut shell, from this, we can easily see where we are winning, or where we need to improve to uphold our values of customer service.
“We cannot solve problems with the kind of thinking we employed when we came up with them.” — Albert Einstein. But we can certainly strive to continually focus on one of the most important aspects of our business – our clients. We continually seek to problem solve, build on what we already know, and focus on our values to ensure our clients are receiving the kind of service they deserve. Don’t be surprised if you receive a call this year requesting a coffee and a catch up, we can assure you, it will be time well spent.