Brace for Impact

When companies roll out new systems or changes, they often focus on the impact to the customer, neglecting the other key stakeholders in the process: the internal staff members who have to help and advise customers on systems that are brand new to them too.

A high-street financial institution I worked with was rolling out a new digital loan journey. In good agile fashion, they were working incrementally, starting simple and then adding complexity over time.

The problem was that customer-facing colleagues were being left behind as functionality transitioned in phases from old systems to new, becoming frustrated by what they saw as constantly changing goalposts. Internal morale was suffering and progress was grinding to a halt as staff became resistant to using the new system, falling back to the old one by default.

I was tasked with working out how to get the internal teams on board with the change and encourage adoption of the new system.

When rolling out any new change, it’s a good idea to do an impact assessment, which essentially involves asking a few key questions:

  • What changes will be required to existing processes and procedures?

  • Which teams will be affected and to what degree?

  • What is the best way to communicate the changes, based on the specific requirements of those teams?

  • Will those teams need access to new systems or training?

  • Who will create, schedule and deliver that training or awareness?

  • What else is going on which might affect the teams’ abilities to handle the change?

  • What additional support might be required during the transitional period?

  • How will we know when things are going wrong?

In this particular example, I worked alongside an experienced call handler, to fully understand the pain points and challenges being experienced at the coal-face. The initial overwhelming feedback that I got was that the staff felt completely unheard and that they were just being thrown in at the deep end, to sink or swim. With that in mind, the first thing I did was to arrange a session to share some information about the project and to give the teams the opportunity to directly ask questions and raise concerns. That was a difficult session, but completely necessary!

Another common theme was that colleagues working in customer-facing roles such as contact centres and branches don’t have much non-contact time to spare for background reading. This was why the previous approach of just sending out periodic emails was majorly missing the mark: most of the messages were going completely unread, or being scanned once and then lost forever in the depths of people’s inboxes.

  1. Firstly, I worked with the Learning & Development Team to develop face-to-face training material that covered both the new functionality and how it linked in with the organisation’s overall strategy.

  2. I then created web-based resources that staff could access as and when they needed, even while on the phone to customers. This included an overview of the whole project, what it was trying to achieve and a current timeline of where we had got to. People are not mindless cogs in a machine - when they’re asked to accept change, which often causes them inconvenience and uncertainty, they like to know why.
    Taking time to provide context is often a simple but very effective way to increase cooperation.

  3. Then, for each new increment I created:

    • A concise, easy to understand summary of what was going to be changing and when.

    • What was in scope for each phase but also, most importantly, what was not.

    • Some simple before and after process maps to highlight the differences.

    • Some FAQs to try to head off any simple queries at the pass.

    • And I also provided clear fall-back options and escalation paths of what to do if all else failed.

Needless to say, there were still occasional misunderstandings and mistakes as staff adjusted to the new way of doing things, but feeling like they had actually been consulted and listened to, and that someone was taking the time to support them through the change rather than just leaving them to get on with it, meant they became much more willing to adopt the new system, and more helpful in troubleshooting issues when they arose.

All of which allowed the project to get back on track, rolling out new features more quickly and effectively than before and customer satisfaction increased substantially, as more customers were able to benefit from the new, improved functionality sooner, rather than being redirected to older, slower systems.