By: Tammy Godby, Global Manager, Organizational Development | 2/25/2021 |

When we talk about Customer Success, we often think about those individuals and companies outside of our own organization. Within Organizational Development, our customers are internal.  So, the question then becomes…are the outcomes for customer success the same internally as well as externally? Let’s take a look.

When I think of customer success, I think about the end result, the desired outcomes we want to achieve. And what are our desired outcomes you ask?

Engagement – Are we providing opportunities for all employees to engage?  Do employees find Meaning, Autonomy, Growth, Impact, & Connection within their role and within Percepta?

Leadership – Are we providing a culture of learning and growth for all employees?  Is it accessible, relevant, and timely?

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging – Are we proving a safe space for individuality and authenticity? Do employees feel as though they belong?

Global engagement is not an easy task.  Especially when you factor in time zones, cultures, working from home and personalities.  So, we worked on what efforts, ideas, and plans work for all employees.  Touchpoints beginning prior to employment that continue throughout, onboarding and into the entire employee journey that reinforce and build MAGIC. (Meaning, Autonomy, Growth, Impact, & Connection).  We also provide engagement opportunities that go beyond metrics and focus on living Percepta values.

Leadership development is an ever-evolving program.  We strive to teach participants the knowledge and skills to equip them to lead teams as an educated corporate citizen. Our vision at Percepta is to create and support a lifelong learning culture that reinforces our values and encourages employees in their quest for personal and professional growth. A learning culture that delivers opportunities to learn new skills, advance careers, and provide personal enrichment.  We’ve implemented tiered leadership training, and mini sessions to serve all the teams and individuals throughout Percepta.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging is our most recent effort and one of our most important. The standard within Percepta – We are developing an atmosphere of respect, equality, and acceptance.  This is the expectation we have for all how we treat, interact and work with each other in Percepta. We’ve developed awareness workshops to help us better understand and connect.  We’ve also released a survey to help us see where more work needs to be done.  And in 2022, we’re launching a mental health and wellbeing initiative based on the responses we received from our 2021 survey.

These are all great things that we’re doing, but we must sometimes wait to see results, they aren’t always instantaneous.

• Sometimes it takes a leader practicing new coaching skills before we can see the difference within their team.
• Sometimes we don’t hear about the effect of our acknowledgments and rewards until an employee sends pictures of the Holiday gifts they were able to purchase thanks to saving all their rewards points.
• Sometimes we don’t understand the impact of growing perspectives, providing safe space, and respecting and celebrating differences, until we hear from employees that they finally felt they could show up to work authentically without fear of not fitting in.

Customer Success is really having a satisfied customer.  Was their experience good? Were we able to help in some way?  We are always working to find new, improved, more innovative ways to connect and support our customers.  I’ll leave you with a couple of testimonials that reinforce our “why” within Organizational Development.

What would happen if you thought of everyone you interacted with as a customer?  Would it change how you treat them, talk with them, help guide them?  Think about it. 

“The class made me think about my personal supervisor styles and shined light on some behaviors I can work on changing in order to be a better Supervisor. The class also brought attention to my emotional supervisory skills that can be improved. The class also provided great leadership tools, techniques and handouts to use in the future.”

“My favorite hands down would be the session on Biases. While we think we understand, this session took a deeper dive and challenged our own thoughts within the workplace.”

“I thoroughly enjoyed this training. It was the best, most enjoyable and most inspiring training I have had during my time here at Percepta to date. I am very grateful for the training and feel that it will have a profound effect on my team going forward.”