COVID-19

Planning for the new year Part 4 (Moving from a case-first to a knowledge-first culture)

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In the first, second and third articles in this series, we walked through Guidepost statements; how to talk to your employees and making sure your managers are player-coaches, not enforcers. In this article we talk about one of the most important foundational elements for your service organization.

Does your service and support team employ a case-first approach? Not sure? Hint: If you continuously feel like you’re chasing your tail, constantly drowning in escalation-after-escalation backlogs, and your cases seem to grow increasingly complex, you are probably running your business on a case-first model.

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Planning for the new year – Part 3 (Managers as player-coaches)

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In the first and second articles in this series, we walked through Guidepost statements, and how to talk to your employees. This post tackles managers as player-coaches — a key element to make sure you are ready for the new year.

Historically, service and operations managers were tasked with making sure the trains were on track and on time. If the global pandemic taught us anything, it is that the existing tracks are being shredded and we need to figure out where and how to lay new tracks.

Unfortunately, we have not yet given managers the freedom to operate in this new world—and it costs us a lot more than we realize. Customers hate the rigid rules that constrain our support teams in the name of efficiency. Employees hate the measures that demonstrate just their adherence to process, not their ability to work around the nuances. And managers have one hand tied behind their back by their inability to use judgment to resolve customer issues or help employees grow.


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Have you hugged your local consultant today?

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There’s a dirty little secret in the world of independent consultants and startups: It’s feast or famine, even in the best of times.

The reason this is such a well-kept secret is that when people hear the term “consultant” or “startup,” they think of well-funded organizations like Deloitte, McKinsey or startup unicorns that dominate popular imagination. They don’t think of their marketing copywriter or the consultant with deep expertise who quickly solves specific pain points. But in 2020, it’s just those businesses—those “local” consultants —who are feeling the pain of pandemic shutdown. And may need a hug.

Over the summer, Comatch polled 1000 independent consultants to see how COVID had impacted business. While we may have guessed that travel and leisure consultants are expected to take a 51% hit this year, the numbers are painful for many others. The research estimated that marketing consultants would experience a 37% decrease in earnings; high tech and IT would drop 39%; and strategy consultants’ earnings would decrease by 44%. Since many expenses are fixed, these percentages translate to even more pain than the numbers show.

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