Business

Ciphr, the UK’s leading SaaS HR provider, has appointed David Burns as its chief technology officer (CTO). He joins the group’s leadership team and board of directors, with immediate effect.

Burns takes on responsibility for Ciphr’s product development and management and will lead all technical activities for the Marlow-based, ECI-backed group, including development, internal IT, deployment, technical support, and implementation.

A tech leader with nearly 30 years of experience, he has held CTO positions at Key Travel, Yell, CGI (Logica), HP Enterprise Services, and, most recently, autonomous vehicle software firm Wejo; as well as executive roles at Capita, Vertex Data Science and voestalpine.

Burns is the third senior appointment for Ciphr in 2022, following a strong year of growth for the business. He will report directly to Ciphr’s CEO Chris Berry and oversee the director of technology, Peter Hawes, and other IT department heads.

Chris Berry, CEO of Ciphr, says: “We are delighted to welcome David to Ciphr and the group’s executive team. He’s an internationally experienced CTO with a career across a range of different service sectors and business models, including listed company and private-equity scenarios, and brings with him a wealth of invaluable skills and experience. He’s ideally suited for this newly created role and will be instrumental in ensuring that Ciphr continues to offer an industry-leading user experience across our products as we grow the business.”

David Burns, CTO at Ciphr, says: “I’m delighted to join Ciphr as its first-ever chief technology officer and work with such a talented team. The business has added a lot of functionality to its HCM platform over the past few years, including payroll, talent, and learning, to ensure it can deliver on the increasingly complex requirements of today’s HR and people teams. I’m looking forward to leading Ciphr’s technology strategy to develop and enhance user experience and help our customers get the most from their Ciphr products.”

Ciphr is a specialist provider of cloud-based HR, payroll, recruitment and learning software. More than 650 organisations use the group’s people management solutions – Ciphr, Digits LMS and Payroll Business Solutions – globally across the public, private and non-profit sectors.

For more information, please visit www.ciphr.com.

Application numbers in white-collar jobs are at breaking point with recent data showing a 35% decline between May 2022 and June 2022. That’s according to the latest data from the world’s largest network of job boards, Broadbean Technology.

Broadbean’s statistics also reveal a 28% decline in the number of applicants year-on-year between June 2021 and June 2022, a figure that could be explained by the fact that there were more active jobseekers last year as the country emerged from lockdown at the end of June 2021.

Sector breakdown

When analysing the data by sector, the statistics reveal a significant decline in applications across IT, pharmaceuticals and accounting. The IT arena saw application numbers fall by 29% between May and June of this year, while figures in pharmaceuticals and accounting were down 41% and 33% respectively. It’s perhaps no surprise that applications across these areas have fallen given the widely reported talent shortages in all three sectors as the UK’s unemployment rate continues to fall and fewer candidates seek employment.

Alex Fourlis, Managing Director at Broadbean Technology commented:

“The UK’s skills crisis is continuing to be a focal issue, and for good reason as our data shows that these shortages are impacting almost every business, across every sector. While there is an undeniable shortage of blue-collar workers in fields such as retail and logistics, the dearth of workers in highly skilled sectors is also of concern for the UK’s economic bounce back, with candidates for these positions not only harder to source, but also requiring lengthier training programmes to develop. This lack of white-collar applicants has the potential to negatively impact the UK’s status as an economic powerhouse.

“For employers and recruiters, now is a critical time. Businesses need to rebuild and nurture dwindling talent pools, utilise innovative technology to streamline hiring and maximise partnerships with external talent suppliers in order to find the undiscovered talent that is so desperately needed. Difficult times are ahead for the UK economy, and immediate action needs to be taken to establish a recruitment market that can best support the country’s economic bounce back.”

27% of European companies are actively using HR analytics for performance management, according to new research by Durham University Business School.

The researchers also found that firms that monitor and manage the performance of their employees using HR analytics are also the ones that use financial incentives to staff intensively. Hence, there appears to be a positive relationship on the role financial incentives have on performance of employees and the use of HR analytics. Whilst also, the researchers discovered that the larger the organisation, the more likely they were to invest in HR analytics for monitoring, although this effect appeared to taper off for the largest firms.

This research was conducted by Barbara Bechter, Associate Professor in Human Resource Management, and Bernd Brandl, Professor in Management, both at Durham University Business School, alongside Alex Lehr, from Radboud University in the Netherlands. The researchers were keen to understand why firms make use of the opportunities HR analytics can offer and why they restrain from the use.

As there are many factors to be considered as to why HR analytics are used, the researchers used a dataset of more than 20,000 firms from all over Europe, i.e. the 2019 European company survey (ECS) to study this. The survey asks both managers and employees in companies whether or not they use HR analytics to monitor employee performance, and provides many further details of the firms as well as on HRM. The researchers were then able to identify which factors do and do not matter in determining when company decides to use HR analytics or not.

From this analysis, the researchers also found that firms that operate in very competitive markets are on average more likely to use HR analytics than firms that indicate they operate in uncompetitive markets.

Professor Bechter says,

“Technological advancements and the digitalisation of business and management processes and activities have made it easy for all firms to implement HR analytics. However, we found that some legal barriers make it difficult for firms to use these new technologies as well as there is some organizational resistance to change and the use of new technologies.

In some firms, employees and the management fear that these new technologies might have negative implications on well‐being and health of safety of employees, as they are deemed as controlling. In old firms the resistance to change and the use of new technologies such as HR analytics is strong, despite potentially making management fairer.”

Interestingly, the researchers found no evidence to suggest that managers with a bad or distant relationship with employees increase their use of HR analytics– showing no systematic link between fraught relationships and monitoring. The researchers did also discover that the use of HR analytics increases with the number of hierarchical levels in an organisation.

Firms in which teamwork is important, e.g., where employees work in more than one team, were also more likely to implement monitoring HR analytics, whilst firms without managers are slightly less likely to use analytics than those with managers.

Professor Brandl says,

“This research clearly shows that the structural and managerial capability of firms is also a huge factor in whether or not firms make use of HR analytics for performance management. However, ever-increasing digitalisation of firms and of the economy, as well as the availability of (big) data, means the use of analytics is becoming increasingly attractive and important as a method for managing and monitoring the performance of their workforce effectively.”

With regards to location, the researchers found no strong link between a country and the likelihood of firms using HR analytics. However, the researchers did find that Romania (50%), Croatia (45%), and Spain (43%) had high levels of employee monitoring, whilst Germany (13%), Sweden (17%) and Ireland (19%) had low levels. Overall, firms in Nordic countries and coordinated market economies in general seem less inclined to use HR analytics to monitor employee performance than their counterparts in CEEC. The reasons for these country differences are found in different legal regulations that allow companies to collect, store and analyse HR related data.

These findings have practical insight for firms, showcasing the factors that can affect the likelihood of HR analytics being implemented, but for policymakers too helping them to understand which firms need help implementing HR analytics, the potential sticking points they are face in attempting to do so, and how to overcome these

Frankfurt School’s Board of Trustees has reappointed Professor Nils Stieglitz as President for another five years. His second term will begin on 1st April 2023.

In recent years, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management has been able to improve its position in leading German and international rankings: from 36th (2018) to 24th place (2021) in the Financial Times European Business School Ranking, and from ninth (2018) to fourth place (2022) in the Wirtschaftswoche ranking of all German universities offering Business Administration programmes. From 2020 to 2022, Frankfurt School has come first in the Manager Magazin ranking of Germany’s best universities for accountants and auditors.

Since 2018, Frankfurt School has also launched several new degree programmes and elective modules, including the Bachelor in Computational Business Analytics, Master in Applied Data Science, Master in Data Analytics & Management, and more.

Frankfurt School has also set up three new research centres: the Corporate Governance Institute, the Centre for Performance Management & Controlling, and the Frankfurt Competence Centre for German and Global Regulation. Faculty members and corporate partners drive the centres’ teaching, research, and various projects, addressing subject areas ranging from IT and data science to strategy and organisational behaviour.

International Advisory Services (IAS) added new ESG-related offerings to its portfolio to focus on strengthening women entrepreneurs and the integration of sustainability themes into corporate strategies. IAS’ Sustainable World Academy now runs 31 online programmes disseminating the necessary skills and know-how required to develop sustainable business practices.

Rainer Neske states: “Professor Nils Stieglitz and his team have strengthened Frankfurt School’s profile as a trustworthy partner to companies. As climate change, digitalisation and AI, continue to cause major upheaval for the economy and our society, we need wise, hardworking, dynamic personalities capable of developing and implementing effective solutions. You’ll find them at Frankfurt School. With Professor Stieglitz at the helm, Frankfurt School has managed exceptionally well with the recent disruptions. As such, our business school is firmly positioned for the future and the Board of Trustees is grateful to him.”

Professor Nils Stieglitz reflects: “The past five years have been extremely successful. Our business model has proven itself time and time again. We are combining research excellence with impactful finance and management education to become Europe’s leading business school. We are in a unique position to do so thanks to our strong faculty with close links to the corporate world, our innovative Degree and Executive Education programmes, the many advisory projects contributing to stable economic development, and a talented and dedicated staff.”

Due to current and recent events, such as the pandemic and the ongoing energy crisis, the UK boiler industry and its supply chain have been impacted.

Even during summer, where demand is low, the supply of boilers has been particularly challenging for us and others in the industry. This means that come winter, the supply of gas boilers is likely to face disruption for the foreseeable future, particularly as demand surges in the colder months.

In a recent survey conducted by Heatable, 62% of consumers fed back that they were “Just shopping around for quotes right now, no rush.”. Our concern is that these consumers may come unstuck.

Winter demand for boilers will result in supply issues
As you may be aware, the domestic heating market is seasonal and the demand for gas boilers sharply increases in the cold, winter months.

As a result, we expect the boiler supply issues to become much more evident as this year’s winter approaches.

This means that there is likely to be a shortage of stock and the availability of ranges and models will become sparse and more restricted.

What are boiler manufacturers saying?

In recent communication to the industry, Worcester Bosch commented:

“The supply of components, mainly pumps, continues to challenge the boiler industry. Longer lead times may be unavoidable during the busy Winter period, however as a manufacturer we are doing everything in our power to overcome this.”

They also added:

“For peace of mind, you may wish to start looking now for a professional heating engineer/ company who can install an A rated Worcester Bosch boiler for you in preparation for the colder months.”

Why is the UK facing a boiler supply issue?

Simply put, manufacturers cannot obtain the required components due to the backlogs and production delays in the post-covid era.

There are well-known supply issues with several key boiler components including semiconductors (the chips inside the circuit boards), fans and pumps.

Winter has always been the busiest time of year for the UK domestic heating industry, so with a gas boiler shortage likely, this is going to have a compounding effect.

So, for anyone that is currently in the market for a new boiler, we advise them not to hold off until Winter, as that’s when the supply issues will really become apparent.

A shortage of boilers means that prices could potentially increase, there may be limited options in terms of brands and models, and you may have to wait longer to have one installed.

Seeders, a high growth global link building agency with eleven offices across the globe enters the UK market by partnering with Passion Digital, a full service digital marketing agency.

The joint venture will enable Seeders to rely on Passion’s authority in the UK market while Passion Digital will benefit by expanding their SEO offering and having access to one of the biggest publisher networks in Europe and globally. The collaboration will also advance innovation-led growth and allow both businesses to offer cutting edge digital marketing services and help clients to improve their digital performance and rankings. By combining their authority and leveraging each other’s expertise, the partners aim to become a leading link building service on the UK market and internationally.

Dennis Akkerman, CEO at Seeders, said:
‘’We are proud to announce this joint venture with Passion Digital, who we have built a strong relationship with over the years. Our partnership with Passion Digital offers us a great foothold in London and will give our international clients a solid entrance into the highly competitive UK market.’’

Alexandre Hoffmann, Managing Partner at Passion Digital, said:
‘’We are really excited to work with Seeders and help them launch their London office. Their European reach is very much in line with our growth objectives. This joint venture will supercharge our SEO offering and allow us to provide an even better service to our UK and international clients.’’

Tim Greatrex, CEO at Passion Digital, said:
‘’Seeders are an exciting company, well managed and have credible ambitions. It’s great to be aligned and contributing to their fast expanding network. Being able to offer our clients high value, multi-country link building and SEO services as a one stop shop can only sharpen our proposition for clients.’’

About Seeders

Seeders a leading global Authority Marketing Agency, specialising in SEO, Link Building, and Digital PR founded in 2012 in Zwolle, Netherlands. As of today Seeders operates in more than 50+ active markets, with 11 offices in 10 countries and more than 100 employees.

About Passion Digital

Passion Digital is a full-service performance marketing agency based in Brixton, London. Founded in 2012 by Mike Grindy, the agency is renowned for combining a data-driven approach with imaginative execution to deliver the best results for its clients. Passion aims to create a work environment that employees want to be part of and since its beginnings has instilled the culture of giving back, such as working closely with nation-wide charities to improve their digital marketing presence and its pro bono work for its local partner charities.

Furniture retailer Upstairs Downstairs is undergoing a new kind of makeover as the latest merchant to transform its multichannel processes with Brightpearl.

The popular home and furniture brand will benefit from Brightpearl’s industry-leading, retail-focused features – including a powerful Automation Engine, cutting-edge Demand Planner and advanced reporting functionality. The team at Upstairs Downstairs will also save countless hours with Brightpearl in place to automate and streamline time-intensive manual processes, which often introduces complexity while hindering growth.

Ireland-born Upstairs Downstairs is a family-run business going back to 1983, and in the almost 40 years since launch has become one of Ireland’s leading furniture stores. The company operates via three bricks-and-mortar outlets based in Monaghan, Enniskillen and Lisburn, and also runs a popular website powered by Shopify Plus – selling high-quality furniture, flooring, bedding and home accessories, direct-to-consumer from over 150 suppliers.

Expansion is imminent for Upstairs Downstairs, but with so many moving parts to the business the merchant lacked visibility between its online operations, warehouses and three physical stores. The team also found it hard to maintain accuracy in its manual reporting, and was straining its resources on manual stock management and time-consuming inventory analysis.

After briefly considering a single solution provider but finding it ‘too lightweight’ for its multichannel complexities, Upstairs Downstairs chose Brightpearl. The agile, made-for-retail operating system is the first choice for many high growth Shopify Plus merchants looking to flexibly grow their businesses – and it was implemented for Upstairs Downstairs in a lightning fast 150 days.

Brightpearl’s range of Plug & Play integrations meant it seamlessly synced with the furniture retailer’s existing Shopify Plus setup as well as its current accounting software, Xero, and its deep API access means it can easily link to any apps or sales channels the merchant chooses to scale with in future.

Brightpearl’s powerful Automation Engine – which streamlines and automates operations such as ordering, inventory, warehouse, shipping and fulfilment means that key team members can refocus their time towards Growing Fearlessly, saving crucial hours through the elimination of clunky manual processes.

The merchant’s slow stock management issues are solved with Brightpearl’s best-in-class Inventory Planner Premium, which offers data-led inventory insights across multiple locations and meaningful demand forecasting. This means Upstairs Downstairs can easily move stock between its three physical stores and make more informed replenishment decisions to boost profits.

Tricky manual reporting is also a thing of the past for the homeware brand, as Brightpearl’s dedicated retail accounting function gives Upstairs Downstairs the enhanced financial accuracy and in-depth reports it’s been seeking.

Potentially the biggest game-changer for Upstairs Downstairs: with Brightpearl in place as its central source of truth the brand will gain 360-degree visibility into its online and offline business performance, receiving real-time insights that cover POS, inventory, warehouse and more.

“With Brightpearl in place our systems are much more streamlined, and paperwork is a thing of the past,” said David McQuaid, spokesperson for Upstairs Downstairs. “Brightpearl integrates brilliantly with our sales channels, and acts as a single source of truth so we can see everything in one place. The upside of that is a multichannel operation that is more manageable, efficient, productive and scalable.”

Justin Press, SVP Customer Success at Brightpearl, said, “Upstairs Downstairs is a successful retailer in Ireland, but as we see time and again with fast-growing enterprises, its disjointed manual systems were at breaking point and hindering growth. The brand’s smart decision to combine Brightpearl and Shopify Plus has created a powerful, scalable architecture that brings all the retailer’s online and offline operations together into one real-time, central source of truth. Now there’s nothing stopping Upstairs Downstairs from Growing Fearlessly – and we know that with Brightpearl, they’ll feel right at home.”

Continued commitment to innovation powers 38% year-over-year growth, 80m global users, and the opening of 59 new offices through Zoho’s transnational localism initiative                                                                                         

LONDON, July 26, 2022 — Zoho Corporation, a leading global technology company, announced achieving a rate of 38 per cent year-over-year growth, and surpassing the 80 million user mark. In addition to ongoing global expansion, the company continues to grow its product portfolio and make investments in automotive, robotics, and health care technologies. Zoho also celebrated opening 59 new global hub-and-spoke offices in rural areas and small cities over the last two years to expand into new markets and further support local communities.

The announcement, made at Zoho’s annual analyst summit, affirms the company’s commitment to developing resilient solutions that support all businesses, many of which have been negatively impacted by recent economic disruption.

“We’ve long felt that we have a responsibility to the communities and world around us, whether that be through providing job opportunities to those with less access or by delivering products that help business grow to their potential,” said Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho Corporation. “Our approach from the start of Zoho—now 26 years ago—still rings true today: nurture people and businesses, and lower the barrier of entry. Cost effective, yet built-for-scale products and regionally located offices aside, Zoho has built its business by being a partner that helps people thrive. Our success is their success and vice versa.”

Investments

Zoho has made strategic investments in the areas of automotive, robotics, and health care technology to support the development of and access to advanced solutions by those in need. These include:

• An investment in Silicon Valley-based smart electric utility vehicles and powertrains manufacturer Boson, which focuses on light utility vehicles (LUVs). Boson’s initial focus is on farming, and Zoho shares that focus as it expands into rural areas across the globe.
• An investment in electric motorcycle company Ultraviolette Automotivein partnership with TVS Motor Company, an India-based motorcycle manufacturer. The combined investment totals roughly $15 million and will support the launch of a new, high-performance electric two-wheel vehicle slated for release in 2022.
• A $5 million investment in Voxelgrids, an Indian startup that builds Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners. This is being used to foster development of deep technological capabilities and intellectual property (IP) in the country.
• Forming a consortium of local technology companies based in the Kongu region of India. Through this initiative, Zoho will make a capital investment to set up centers in the region focusing on the research and development of critical technologies for capital goods manufacturing, like machine tools, industrial automation software, and production process know-how.
• A $2.5 million investment in Genrobotics, an Indian startup building robotics and AI-powered solutions for social issues such as hazardous working conditions. Zoho’s investment will assist Genrobotics in its mission to eradicate manual scavenging in India and provide safety and dignity to workers in the sanitation and oil and gas industries.

Innovation and R&D Diversity

Zoho’s investment and innovation philosophies are rooted in the research and development of powerful, unified tools that are customisable to any organisation’s distinct business needs and vision. More than 60% of the company’s workforce is devoted to engineering, both in the development of new technologies and building ways for those apps to complement and integrate with one another. To date, Zoho has developed more than 55 apps, having grown from 40 only two years ago. Though the scope of our offerings continues to increase, our price does not, and we remain committed to affordability—offering both free and paid versions of every product—and delivering software tailored to the distinct needs of small and medium-sized businesses.

Zoho’s Proven Growth Philosophy: Transnational Localism

Zoho continues to celebrate global expansion through its Transnational Localism effort, first introduced in early 2020 as a means to create self-reliant local communities and economies. Since then, the initiative has grown to include new global offices, local hiring, partnerships with local organizations and government bodies to lower the technology adoption barrier for businesses, upskilling courses in association with educational institutes, language localisation including RTL support for languages like Arabic, and local pricing for several countries. The offices opened as part of Zoho’s Transnational Localism efforts follow a hub-and-spoke model, with larger offices serving as hub to several dozen small spoke offices located in rural areas and towns around the world. This method of growth allows employees to stay in their hometowns and contribute to their local community while working for a leading, globally recognised technology company.

The company improved access to both software and localised Zoho support, opening 59 hub-and-spoke offices in the last two years. In addition to aggressive expansion into new territories and markets, including Canada, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia, Zoho has announced plans to add 100 new small-scale offices in rural districts across India in the next few years.

Zoho celebrated impressive regional growth, with headcount up 300% outside of India since the start of 2020. It also aims to hire at least 2,000 employees across engineering, technology, and product development, particularly software developers, quality assessment engineers, web developers, designers, product marketers, writers, technical support engineers, and sales executives within the next year. The recent openings of Zoho’s McAllen and New Braunfels, TX, offices in April 2022 and December 2021, respectively, exemplifies this mission. Since its ribbon-cutting, the McAllen office now hosts 40+ employees from surrounding communities, and has maintained an ambitious hiring cadence. The New Braunfels office has added more than 30 employees since its opening.

By Ben Davison, Co-Founder of Axiologik

In the digital world, everyone gets excited about building shiny new features, but something that exists only on a developer’s laptop won’t make the customer impact it should. What really matters is experience: customers want products to perform, be available when they need them, and be well supported if something goes wrong.

Today, more than ever, we need to deliver services with production in mind, which requires a shift in the way many teams think.  Historically, development teams and operations teams typically sat apart and had opposite objectives – developers wanted to release new features, while operations teams wanted to keep the service stable. At Axiologik, we’ve led many transformations towards service excellence in fast flow product businesses. Here are 10 key points for you to think about as part of your journey:

1.Managing your estate is fundamental to everything else you do

If you don’t understand what exists in your total IT estate, then you can’t protect it and you won’t understand how it all fits together. Use automated discovery tools to sniff out everything on your network, from storage and infrastructure up to applications and their dependencies. Use security scanning and software composition analysis tools to understand things like patch levels and libraries in use within your products.

If you don’t do these things, you’re at risk of breaking production through missed dependencies or elements of your estate that are vulnerable and unmanaged. It doesn’t look good if your customer data is compromised because you don’t understand what’s on the pitch.

2.Shift the mindset towards service management as an enablement function

Ensure the services provided to internal customers are operating effectively and are designed with customers’ needs in mind. If your desktop infrastructure breaks regularly, processes are cumbersome, or toolsets don’t integrate into the way teams really work, then teams will be distracted from their core purpose of building great services for customers.

Shift the mindset from service management as a governance function to one of enablement. Understand service offerings and who consumes them. Treat internal services exactly as you would treat services offered to customers – if they’re not solving problems, they’re not working effectively.

3.Be deliberately challenging on what ‘ready for production means’

Service updates should go into production without downtime and without any customer impact – anything less is sub-optimal. To achieve this, define what ‘good’ looks like in terms of quality assurance, deployment, and release management standards and practices. Set the cultural expectation that flawless releases with zero downtime is the goal everyone should be working towards.

4.Make service data radically visible

Teams always improve when they get a better insight into their own performance, so ensure service information is published for all to see. This encourages natural competition, the desire to learn from high performing teams, and an impetus within teams to address all areas of underperformance. Support this with cultural reinforcement mechanisms that recognise those that are improving at speed. What counts is not where you are, but the improvements made.

5.Demonstrate that you care about repeatability and automation

Manually deployed changes or changes that can’t be rehearsed are more likely to fail than a repeatable, automated change. Every product team should work towards deploying the same artefacts into each environment and run comprehensive test suites that generate predictable results. Test early and frequently – and don’t listen to people that say non-functional testing has to wait until the end.

6.Work towards fully ‘observable’ systems

Service issues should be spotted and dealt with before customers see them. Many potentially catastrophic issues can be identified and addressed before they reach their full potential. All these elements relate to having highly ‘observable’ systems.

Building observability tools and practices into non-production environments helps you build better services in production – not only do you spot potential issues before they go live, but they also allow you to test your observability before it becomes critical for running production systems. 

7.Non-functionals, non-functionals, non-functionals

If you don’t define what you need upfront and pay attention to how non-functional requirements are realised, it’s highly unlikely you’ll end up with the product you aspire to. It’s simply not possible to design systems and make the right technology choices without understanding how a product needs to behave.

Ensure non-functional requirements are baselined early within your overall lifecycle and ensure your governance validates how these requirements are being met at each stage.

8.Shift thinking from components to end-to-end services and journeys

Use product analytics to understand where customers are dropping out on user journeys and use this information to improve effectiveness of your products. Think first about availability and response time requirements across journeys and only then budget for individual components.

9.Design for failure and the unexpected

Services always fail and it’s the experience during that failure that customers typically remember. Deliberately engage with your failure modes and engineer out as many as possible through automated reconciliation.

However, no matter what you do, you’ll never fully eliminate failure. As part of your service design, think about how customers get help. Ensure support channels understand customer context and can do something – badly designed support channels often leave a more bitter taste than no support channels at all.

10.Ask customers what they think

Ask customers what needs to be improved within the products themselves and get their feedback on support experiences. User research is often just considered a part of new feature development, but it should be ongoing and relate to how customers experience the whole service across physical and digital channels.

The takeaway

None of the above will have the slightest impact unless the organisation demonstrably shows it cares, and this starts at the top. Delivering truly excellent service isn’t an overnight fix and there’s never an endpoint – it’s a long road of gradual, incremental improvement. Over time, using some of the mechanisms above, change will become self-sustaining and continue to accelerate.