Welcome to the next episode of the PHIT Podcast. In this episode titled “Own the Customer” We talk with Carl Grieves

The Questions

1. Tell me a little about what you do, your business, job/role?
2. Thinking about the (people and/or technology impacts of the) last year, what lessons will you take forward and how do you see these being delivered?
3. Do you think users have grown in their confidence in using technology since lockdown?
4. What’s the best piece of business and/or career advice you’ve been given?

The Links

You can view Own the Customer Carl Grieves Part 1 here or on YouTube

You can listen to Own the Customer Carl Grieves Part 1 – Part 1 on Anchor and all good podcast platforms

Previous Episodes

• Episode 1 Part 1 – Never turn down an Opportunity – Special Guest Jono Atherton
• Episode 1 Part 2 – – Gain the trust of the human first – Special Guest Jono Atherton

Previous Series

• Series 1

Key Takeaways

• The value, or perceived value of technology, is probably the highest it’s ever been
• ..just needs to work.
• Technology has been (thoroughly) stress-tested (due to lockdown)
• Put more time and effort into enabling the Customer on the technology…
• Record everything you do…to provide it to customer
• Own the customer

The Transcript

Question 1 – Tell me a little about what you do, your business, job / role?

Carl Grieves  01:25

I’m the Division Director for what is known as Clear Course Membership Services. Clear Course Membership Services are a set of seven businesses that provides membership management platforms and digital services and payments, to the membership sector. So, the membership sector, professional bodies, trade unions, arts and heritage organizations, and some charities. A group of companies that’s in five different divisions, and I’m the leader of one of those divisions. The Division is, as I say, seven businesses, six membership platforms, six CRM platforms, one digital agency. Now 300 People with about 400 customers in the UK!

Question 2 –   Thinking about the (people and/or technology impacts of the) last year, what lessons will you take forward and how do you see these being delivered?

Carl Grieves  05:03

Okay. I think I’ll answer both from a technology perspective and then and then from a people perspective, because I think there’s lots of lessons on both parts of that, really.

From a technology perspective, that the value of the technology we provide now, I think is, is the highest it’s ever been, and probably higher than ever. We provide digital platforms that underpin the relationship that organizations have with their members. And, you know, when we went into the pandemic, it became very clear, very quickly that technology needs to work in a in a fully distributed, remote way. And it was really the first time that the technology had been stressed tested in that way, right. So, it was important that everybody could go home, and everybody could access everything that they access whilst they were in the office and what I suppose that created was a significantly higher value in the solution, than probably organizations perceived in the past, because it just worked, right. It just worked. And we knew it would work, but it had never been tested. One of the organizations we worked with, you know, they sent 800 people home, and they said hmm, people are at home and they need access to exactly the same systems they had whilst they were in the office. So, I think the value or certainly the perceived value of the technology kind of skyrocketed when, when the pandemic hit.

I think also the value of it massively increased, because organizations raced to digitize all of their content, whether it will be their online learning, or the, you know, the exams and certification, or whether it be things like the application process for members, or, you know, for members to join, you know, what we found with all of our clients was, is they immediately needed to further digitize their offering. And actually, we had a couple of, you know, real notable customers, and I won’t name customers by name, but, you know, we had one organization, that’s the Registrar for social care. And there was an immediate government directive for, for social workers to be able to register themselves in a, in a pretty much a 72-hour period without paying the fees that they paid in the past without going through the kind of paper-based type application process they’ve been through in the past.

So no, we had a few examples where customers immediately needed to change their application process, immediately needed to put, you know, content and, and courses online. And actually, with the digital platforms that we were providing, it was relatively easy to move from, you know, a kind of in person paper-based type process, to fully digital processes. So, yeah, from a technology perspective, it’s been particularly compelling.

I guess, part of the question is, what lessons have we learned from that? Actually, the lesson that we’ve learned across all the businesses and, you know, Silverbear, being one of those businesses, is we really need to ensure we have a customer enablement strategy from now on and now what do I mean by that? It’s making sure as organizations that implement technology, which is what we do, we put much more time and effort into enabling the customer on that technology once that technology has gone live, right? Because we need to make sure that everybody can use it. Everybody has the appropriate user guides and online tutorials and, and all of those things that they need.

So, so yeah, our business has changed quite dramatically, I think in the last 12 months, where we’re putting significant focus into you know, enabling the customers we already have, you know, we still bring new customers into the businesses right, but we certainly don’t bring new customers into the businesses as much as we spend time and effort now making sure that our existing customers have got all of the tools around them to help them to use the technology in front of them. So it’s been it’s been a bit of a bit of a step change there really which is which is good.

Interesting…so how are you doing that?

Carl Grieves  11:39

In an office environment, people could always rely on the person, they sat next to, or they could get, you know, the kind of swivel chair support from somebody else in the room. And actually, when you send, you know, 1000s Millions of people home, you know, that they’re on their own. So actually, our role in that actually needs to become immediately more supportive.

So what did we do, you know, we, we provided all of our training online, obviously, but we recorded all of it. And then we, we gave all of that training back to the customers and we indexed it, so we recorded it, indexed it and then provided a library of video tutorials back to the customer. So the customer could then distribute that out to, to, to all of the users. We’ve introduced some certification as well. So we’ve got learning management systems now that enable people to go through a learning journey. Okay. So rather than in the, you know, in the old days, you know, 18 months ago, you know, you would turn up with six other people go through your three-day training course, leave at the end of it, knowing everything you need to know. And then then, you know, and then to be honest, maybe in two weeks, forget everything that you’ve been taught, right! So now, it’s just content, you know, we record everything we do. As I say, we provide the user guides, the indexed tutorials, all of those things. And we’ve also moved across most of the businesses now where we present open webinars to customers every two weeks, right?

If you went on to the silver, their website, or the AAPC website, or the Miller web, you know, the Miller website, whichever company it will be, we’re providing kind of continuous, open, like a drop-in session, people can just turn up if they want to. They’re really well received. So it’s a big step change for us. Yeah, big, big step change, to adapt to, you know, supporting people who are effectively sitting on their own, who no longer have support the people around them, basically.

I think the other questions around people, right. So, you know, what’s the impact been to people?

I’ll talk about the, the business side of this, rather than, rather than the customer side of this. And, you know, I think it’s been amazing, really, right, because, you know, my view of life is people are just so resilient. Right? You know, we send everybody home, you know, effectively 300 people home overnight. And people’s resilience to that, to just get on with the job and, and adapt to the new way of working is, is just, it’s just second to none.

And that, you know, served us well and continues to serve as well. Now, we have a fully distributed workforce now. And I’ve said this to the, to the business many times, and I’ll say to you, you know, long gone are the days now where we’ve got 60 People driving into Guildford at nine o’clock on a Monday morning, right? Just know that there’s just no need for that.

So, you know, it’s the other thing I’ve said to the business a number of times as well as is that this pandemic is difficult and as tragic and as hard as it’s been for so many people. For workplace culture, I think it’s moved us forward two decades.

Because actually, now we have people distributed at home, you know, around the UK, for the work life balance that actually they’ve never been able to achieve in the past, right. So there’s a significant amount of positives, that we should continuously protect now, to make sure people have the work life balance, you know, that that they all now enjoy. So people are resilient and they’ve just been fantastic, and just got on with the job and made it work.

And I think the other point, though, is around company culture. And actually, what I’ve learned in the last, you know, what I’m learning all the time in the last few months is company culture can be a little bit fragile now, because actually, people have spent so much time away from, from their colleagues. And actually, when you look at new starters, who come into the organization as well, it’s quite difficult to get new people to understand what the culture is of the organization that they’re joining, because the people aren’t around them to, you know, have a laugh and a joke with and a chat, and all of those things.

So I’m so I’m very, very cognizant to protect what we’ve been able to achieve in terms of workplace culture and giving people the right balance of home versus office. But I’m also very keen to make sure that we protect the culture. And we are, we maintain the culture of these organizations. So we’ve moved very recently to a position where we’re asking people to come back some days per week, we’re not prescribing what some is, but some is one or more. And we need to do that, because we need to, we need to protect the culture that these organizations have built up over many years. And we also need to do that to be candid, because and again, I’ve said this to the businesses, many times, you can’t assume if you’re sat at home working five days a week, and you’re really happy with that, that your peers and your team and your colleagues feel the same way.

So I’m asking everybody to come back to the office some days a week, because they need to be acutely aware of the, you know, the mental health and well being of everybody else in the business. So, you know, we’re learning as we go. You know, we’re back to school today, right? And kids are back to school today. So it’s kind of, you know, when I talk to the business next week, I’m going to talk a bit about back to school, back to Office, and ask people to just make sure they’re here one day, a week, at least. And I think that way we will, will maintain the culture that, you know, this, you know, some of these businesses have built up over 10 years, right.

So, the lesson learned, we can’t take the culture for granted. I think is one lesson learned. And, you know, as business people or business leaders, we just need to quite proactively protect that.

Is there a levelling of culture across businesses?

Carl Grieves  19:38

I’d like to say actually, it’s, it’s really productive. So it’s super productive. All of these businesses are super productive now because people are people don’t have the commutes that they had in the past, people go from one Teams meeting to another. Customer Engagement is all online as well. Then it’s super efficient or super productive.

However, it can just be a bit routine as well, right? I think that’s part of the problem. So it can be a bit formal, or, you know, I’ll be brave enough to say it can just be a little bit boring, because there’s no real connection between people. People aren’t sat, you know, in and around each other. And, you know, having a laugh and a joke, right. So, so we need to find a balance between the two. And, you know, don’t get me wrong, you know, we are in a much better, healthier, you know, workplace culture type place today than we were a year ago. And as I’ve said, I think we’re 10-20 years ahead of where we would have been without this happening. But we need to ensure that your work is not just productive and not just formal, right? There’s a big social part of that, that we need to be proactive about.

Question 3 –   Do you think users have grown in their confidence in using technology since lockdown?

Carl Grieves  21:34

Okay. I think they have grown in confidence of using the technology. I think, also, they’ve just grown in confidence of the technology. But I think in some ways, in some ways, you know, it mirrors a little bit what I talked about in the previous question. You know, I’m pleased to say now, and I’ve been in, you know, I’ve been in this industry a while as well, Mark, right, I’ve been in this industry for over 20 years. And I’m pleased to say now, really, the technology just works. And actually, people, our customers have grown in confidence of the technology, it has been stressed…everybody home, and because it has just kept working.

So, so all of our organizations, all of our customers see, I think a massively increased value in what they have, and a much, much high degree of confidence in the technology and the stability of that, and the, you know, the processing power of, of those things. So, you know, at a transactional level, the platforms that we provide to our customers can transact billions of pounds worth of payments, right. And generally, it just works. Right?

A few of our, a few of our organizations, Microsoft partners and Microsoft, talk about, you know, continuous product life cycles, which means you never need to upgrade these platforms, again, you know, they’re true SaaS platforms in that way. And they talk about low code, no code development, where customers can self-serve and help themselves that actually, you know, well, that, that they’re just right generally, once it’s set up, it just runs processes, the payments that needs to process, it continuously upgrades it, you know, two times a year, it does all of those great things.

So, I think the summary is organizations have grown confidence of the tech with regards to users. Again, mirroring a little bit about what I talked about before, I think, I think through necessity, the users have become more confident on the technology, because they’ve had to rely on actually themselves and asked to, to use it, because they don’t have that kind of swivel chair support that they that they had in the past.

So yeah, I mean, confidence, confidence grows all the time, but, you know, through necessity of people having to self serve. And through some of the, you know, the support programs that some of our businesses deliver them. Then, in summary, yes, they have grown in confidence.

Question 4 –   What’s the best piece of business / career advice you’ve ever been given?

Carl Grieves  26:50

Yeah, I thought about it. I mean, I, you know, I, I worked with some great leaders over the years, right. So there’s this, there’s lots of lots of advice and things that I I’ve absorbed over the years that have helped me immensely to be fair over the last two decades. One that stands out for today, I suppose, is I worked for a leader over a decade ago, who told me to own the customer?

That was that was his headline, own the customer. And, you know, over time, I think there’s, I think there’s two reasons for that. Being, you know, a good piece of advice for me, you know, is if you own the customer, that you’re ultimately owning, where the value sets, right? And, you know, what does that mean? Well, if you have a good relationship with all your clients, if you know, all of your clients, if you go to battle for your clients, if you support your clients, that’s where the value is, right. And that’s where the value is for organizations financially, you know, let’s be honest about it, you know, they pay our bills and help make sure we can pay our wages. It’s where the value sits in terms of what the market demands, you know, the innovation, the requirements that customer’s needs, you know, so it drives, it drives our roadmap, so drives our financials that drives our roadmap.

So, I have spent, and you know, this Mark, because you are a client of mine back in the day, and, you know, I have spent very consciously a significant amount of time making sure I keep abreast of the clients, and I know, the clients and you know, that all probably falls under the strapline of owning the customer.

Because it drives everything. So I think so I think that’s the point. So, that’s served me well, and, you know, my career has progressed over the years as well, on the back of, you know, to be honest, on the back of that. I also think the other reason to do it, and this is a little bit self serving, but for people who are listening who are going through their career pathway and want to, you know, become a managing director or an owner or, you know, build a business, buy a business, run businesses, I think at a professional level is kind of where your leverage is, right? Because if you own the customer and you know the customer and the customer knows you and respects you and knows that you’ll support them and as I say, go for, you know, go the extra mile for them, it makes you kind of like…inside of a business to probably the most informed people inside of the business because you know, what the market wants and you know, where the customer relationships all are. And yeah in a it helps you be a business leader right? Because ultimately you are directly connected to where the value of your business comes from.

And I have, you know, I think, to summarize, I have very consciously in the last 15 years, made sure that I am continuously connected to the customers, because ultimately, you know, if it wasn’t for them, we don’t have any.