Chief Learning Officer - September 2007 - (Page 38)

environment in practice: CIGNA Service Operations: Making Strategic Change Happen, and Making It Stick Karen Kocher quickly onboarding employees and providing them with product, service and response-handling training. This is often accomplished through a combination of classroom training, observation and a study program. Some organizations will provide continuous learning, particularly those that support products or services with short life cycles. Other organizations conspicuously skip that step. In fact, according to a report by the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA), just 27 percent of service and support staff spends more than five days on annual ongoing learning. Times are changing — there are specific tactics outside of more-common learning approaches that help realize the benefits that come with well-executed customer service. Although many organizations embrace some of the following approaches, few employ them all, and many are unable or unwilling to make the commitment and invest. A study completed by Professors Bill Withers and Patrick Langan, both of Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, determined that 78 percent of employer respondents said they provided some customer service training, but 65 percent of those said they would provide more if it were available. Perhaps the easiest place to improve is by exposing employees in the customer service function to a broader curriculum of learning modules that might (or should) already exist in the organization. Service representatives typically aren’t trained on anything other than service. Employees hired for their technical expertise might not have innate customer service abilities, just as those hired for the service skills might lack selling abilities. If these employees are expected to generate revenue, then aspects of sales training (including negotiation, presentation skills, selling skills and even account management) should be introduced. The reverse is also true — customer service modules and learning methods should be extended into other field and customer-facing units. Astute learning organizations also will uncover learning requirements directly tied to customer service’s goals and objectives. For example, if the marketing organization truly wants to leverage the daily contacts that take place via the service channel, then the service organization needs background and learning in some of the techniques relevant to conducting market research and developing customer insight. At large, multibillion-dollar corporate entities, encouraging employees to adopt new behaviors can be a daunting challenge. This was the case in 2002 to 2004 for the leaders of CIGNA’s service operations organization. At the heart of CIGNA’s challenge was how to foster the new behaviors needed to achieve new and better results — not only for the 6,000employee service operations division but for the company’s plan customers, members and health care providers. Since mid-2002, CIGNA’s service operations division has been revamping its customer service practices. Company executives knew customer service experience accounts for 50 percent of the reason customers stay with CIGNA, therefore, the service interactions must reinforce that customers get great service. The service operations division, however, faced some challenges in putting this concept into practice. Over the next six months, CIGNA engaged in an intensive and rapid implementation of significant process redesign and technology modification intended to improve its overall customer service experience. Soon, the company began to see a noticeable improvement. The challenge then became ensuring the changes and processes that had been rolled out to the field were going to stick. The answer was simple: Modify behavior. Ultimately, CIGNA realized it had to understand what behaviors really make the difference, learn to make them happen for hundreds of managers and thousands of associates and then make those behaviors stick. CIGNA teamed up with Continuous Learning Group to identify critical path behaviors and then to develop managers’ and leaders’ skills to foster and sustain discretionary performance regarding the things that matter most to the business. CIGNA provided learning and coaching to all service operations managers, who were then formally recognized for achieving designated levels of fluency and results. Initially, CIGNA wanted to implement key strategies to achieve significant business results with faster, consistent and sustainable deployment. The company’s learning executives quickly realized, however, that there was also tremendous value in the cultural and employee engagement improvements, as well as in the power of having all managers fluent in a common skill set. CIGNA recognized building habit strength requires more than learning alone — learning gets it started, but structured coaching and reinforcement are even more essential to sustainability. To effectively remove obstacles and reinforce progress, CIGNA needed to involve managers and leaders at all levels. CIGNA’s commitment to superior customer service went from a strategy on paper to one in action. In the past two years, CIGNA earned a No. 1 ranking among 10 competitors in claim service, and it was ranked No. 2 in call service. Karen Kocher is the chief learning officer of CIGNA Corp. She can be reached at editor@clomedia.com. September 2007 Simulation Performance simulation doesn’t refer to generic soft-skills simulation where a learner reads a scenario and responds. Rather, performance simulation is akin to applying a flight simulator to the business environment — it enables end-users to acquire near-job expertise while working in a low-risk, dryrun environment that allows managers and colleagues to observe, refine and improve individual performance. Use of simulations in the customer service arena can drive substantial improvements to service metrics by improving individual performance and productivity. But proper sim- I www.clomedia.com I Chief Learning Officer 38 http://www.clomedia.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Chief Learning Officer - September 2007

Editor's Letter Contents Letters to the Editor Strategies Selling up, Selling Down Take Five Imperatives Guest Editorial Learning Solutions Embarking on a Learning Journey Clo Profile Environment CIGNA Service Operations: Making Strategic Change Happen, and Making It Stick Tactics Black & Decker: On-Demand Learning Creation and Consumption Productivity The Army You Have Human Capital Holiday Inn Express: Delivering Critical Training Globally Case Study: Tegan Jones Business Intelligence Case Study: Lisa Rummler Advertisers' Index Editorial Resources In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - September 2007

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