Empathy Services from Harding & Yorke

Most forward-thinking organisations recognise that their most important resource is human beings.  People have a colossal impact on the success and profitability of their business, whether through designing effective strategies, creative organisation and leadership, cost-effective productivity or exceeding customer expectations.

At Harding & Yorke we have a passionate interest in people and their influence and effectiveness in the working environment.  Our unique combination of experience and insight stems from our involvement with organisations across a wide range of industry sectors.  Our processes and methodologies are tried and tested and, as many of our clients will testify, the results speak for themselves.  We believe that it's not just what you do but it's the way that you do it that gets results and we apply this philosophy to the way we work with you too.

Our approach is five-fold:

• Measurement and Benchmarking
• Diagnostics / Planning
• Design
• Implementation
• Reinforcement and support

Our consultants and trainers work alongside you, every step of the way, combining your knowledge of your business with our experience and expertise in people development, strategy and process design and customer management. 

We are happy to complement the skills you already have in-house and the level of our involvement can be determined by you.  We want you to get the best value from your investment of working with us and we look to transfer and develop skills to your people so that you can become self-sufficient. 

Having said that, many of our clients do return to working with us, tapping into our wide range of skills and services, as they are faced with new challenges.

We hope that there's something here that is of interest to you.  If what you want is not on the list - please give us a call anyway.  We'd be happy to discuss your needs and see how we can help.

A brief outline of the range of things we do, with a bit more detail on our Solutions (Consultancy and Development) services is given below:

Empathy Measurement and Benchmarking - how it feels to be a customer

• Empathy Audit (objective assessment of what the customer experience feels like, including process elements/customer journeys,  telephone calls, e-mails, website and/or face to face interactions)
• ERIC Audit - Customer Experience Benchmarking (within and across 13 industries)
• Customer Interviews / Preference Surveys - face to face or telephone interviews with existing or potential customers - using spontaneous open response questions to explore how they feel about you and your brand - and what they'd like to see
• The Customer Experience - multi-media presentation of our audit results - using examples from real customer interactions to bring the experience to life and frame our observations and recommendations

Diagnostics / Planning

• On-Site Discovery  (Internal Audit)
  • Our consultants spend time with you, talking to and observing front-line people at all levels. Our aim is to identify the key drivers of customer-facing behaviours.  We look at recruitment, structure, systems and processes, performance and quality measures, rewards and recognition, training, coaching, culture and management style and skills
• Report and Recommendations
  • Following our on-site discovery, we present our findings and recommendations to you either in report format or in a face-to-face meeting
• Action Planning
  • We facilitate a discussion with your management team on key areas to address, prioritising and planning and generating a plan for implementing change
• Meeting Facilitation
  • We can act as objective facilitator in any kind of meeting, ensuring that internal issues are challenged and addressed assertively, desired outcomes are achieved and timescales adhered to

Design

• Define the desired experience
  • Establish what you want the customer experience to be like - to support your brand, deliver quality and efficiency and build loyalty and advocacy
• Measurement Tools (contact quality, performance measures)
  • We work with you to design (or revise) balanced measures to be used for motivational coaching and performance management.  Our focus is on describing and encouraging excellence.  Measures can include call quality forms, e-mail quality guidelines, balanced scorecard performance management frameworks
• Coaching / Performance Management Programmes
  • We work alongside clients to design and deliver effective coaching and performance management programmes looking at roles, skills, structure, timing and success measures 
• Culture / Attitudinal Change Programmes
  • We work with internal project teams to bring external experience and perspective to the design and delivery of sustainable change programmes.  Our approach is to advise and contribute ideas and expertise but to make sure ownership remains with your people
• Internal and External Recruitment Programmes
  • Again, we can bring cross-industry experience and the empathy dimension to the design and implementation of recruitment processes, including pre-testing, interviews and assessment centres
•  Skills Training
• • We can design and deliver (or train your people to deliver) workshops in Communication (face to face, call handling, written), contact quality assessment, training, coaching, performance management and leadership

Implementation

• Our preferred approach is to train your people to deliver the material we design.  That way, you gain from developing additional skills and expertise rather than relying on us to deliver for you.  However, if speed is of the essence or you don't have the necessary internal resource, we can help you by delivering in the following areas:
  • Training workshops
  • Train the Trainer / Trainer Accreditation
  • Mass Engagement Events
  • Teambuilding Days

Reinforcement and Support

• On-the-job Coaching
  • Our consultants can provide one-on-one support to front-line staff, team leaders and managers to develop their skills and confidence in the live environment.  This can include coaching on recorded calls, letters, emails or ‘coach the coach' observation sessions for line managers.
• Executive Coaching
  • One-on-one coaching for managers at all levels by our senior consultants (who have first-hand senior management experience)
• Project Management
• Re-assessment
  • Following the implementation of improvement initiatives, we can re-assess and report progress and areas for further work