Changing the focus to a customer-oriented business
Rentokil Pest Control is part of Rentokil Initial, one of the world’s largest providers of business services. Formed some eighty years ago, RPC has grown to become one of the UK’s longest established and best known pest control service providers.
However, prior to regime change in 2005, its numbers had increasingly been delivered at a cost to the business. A new MD was installed and, following his initial six-month review, a new business strategy was duly initiated. A key element of this involved refocusing the business along much more customer-centric lines.
Invited to address the issue of culture change for the business, Wingivers immediately sought to determine the exact nature of RPC’s customer offering. As very little work had been done on this internally, our brief was expanded to include critical development work on the customer proposition. Once clarified and completed, this could then form the basis for all subsequent development work and internal communications related to the culture change process.
While the conventional approach might have been to research the customer base first, Wingivers began by canvassing a broad cross-section of RPC staff through a series of face-to-face interviews, field visits and workshops. This had the twin advantages of being more economical and, more importantly, helping to reinforce levels of confidence in the hard-pressed workforce. (Instead of being made to feel that they were being subjected to a process when working with Wingivers, managers were actively helping to shape and develop the activity themselves.)
The business’s customer base was broken down into some eleven segments, and of these five major sectors were targeted with a view to establishing (in conjunction with RPC staff) the general principles underpinning excellence in customer service. This revolved around the concept of positioning front-line operational staff as ‘helpful experts’ (a phrase coined by RPC staff) embodying the qualities of reliability, thoroughness and transparency.
Wingivers then engaged more RPC staff in the development of activities and materials designed to communicate and embed the new operating principles across the workforce in general. This work – which, incidentally, was excitingly conceived, well designed and very well received – not only played an important role in establishing the new customer proposition throughout the organisation but also helped to lay a firm foundation for the business’s approach to service delivery. In addition, because of the way it was generated, it provided a platform for positive, constructive relations between RPC’s operational and marketing functions.
At the same time, key work was being done on the customer interface. Stressing the need for alternative ways of working, this involved Wingivers in working alongside and talking to people at all levels within the organisation to identify existing pockets of good practice and disseminate them more widely. At every stage, people were encouraged to believe that their contributions were valued and their views were respected, reinforcing the MD’s strategy of shifting significant investment towards front-line staff providing services to customers – yet another example of the profound culture change that was being implemented across the organisation.