How to Build an Omnichannel, Customer-Centric Operating Model

Faced with the team's difficulty in adopting new customer promises, to understand the resulting initiatives, and to go beyond organizational silos to deliver them, this real estate giant chose Sia Partners to help it transform its operational model. We assessed the contribution to the target Customer Experience of 40 initiatives already underway, to re-prioritize them and identify additional initiatives to be initiated.

With over 444 stations across the country, Circle K (formerly Topaz) is Ireland’s largest fuel and convenience brand. Circle K sought to enhance their forecourt offering in the Irish market. In collaboration with Circle K, we began a strategy development process that considered how it could increase the value for Circle K and channel partners, by enhancing its customer offer while also addressing the opportunities and challenges facing the sector on the future of fuel.

A new channel strategy was developed and a franchise model for dealers was designed, leveraging Circle K’s understanding of customer needs and the trend towards healthy ‘on the go’ convenience foods from their successfully established 'Re.Store' offer. We worked with Circle K to put the new processes and operating model in place to support the new franchise offer. Topaz has now gone live with its first franchise customers and it is outperforming expectations. There is a strong pipeline of new sites under consideration with the channel well-positioned for future growth.

[Sia Partners] "brought the structure we needed and strongly challenged our team, which was critical to our success”

Circle K (formerly Topaz) is the largest food and convenience brand in Ireland, with over 400 stores across the country. This figure contains approximately 280 dealers and 160 Circle K owned sites. Canadian group Alimentation Couche-Tard acquired Topaz in a €400 million deal in February 2016.

The Challenges

Circle K sought to enhance their forecourt offering in the Irish market. It wanted to consider how it could increase the value for Circle K and channel partners, by enhancing its customer offer while also addressing the opportunities and challenges facing the sector on the future of fuel. Up to this point, the company had operated a dealership model.

What We Did

We were asked to support Circle K in the development of a channel strategy for the dealer network and also to design and develop the model and plan for a franchise model. The process involved bringing the Circle K team on a journey; building the franchise proposition, and mobilising the team around the future destination of the business. We worked with Circle K to put the new processes and operating model in place to support the new franchise offer. The services provided included:

• Strategic analysis and proposition design
• Organisational design and target operations modelling
• People mobilisation
• Data analyst skills/change impact analysis
• Project management

The Outcomes

A new channel strategy was developed and a franchise model for dealers was designed, leveraging Circle K’s understanding of customer needs and the trend towards healthy ‘on the go’ convenience foods from their successfully established Re.Store offer.

Working with Circle K, we achieved clarity around a single strategy that the delivery team and senior management believed in and were excited about. We designed a clear approach to achieve this strategy at an operational level, with targets to measure what a good outcome looks like, workstreams to deliver, and owners to ensure accountability.

Working to very tight deadlines, across multiple functions, up and down multiple levels of the organisation hierarchy, we achieve alignment and mobilised the team to deliver growth at pace. The first sites have now gone live with the first franchise customers. There is a strong pipeline of new sites under consideration with the channel well positioned for future growth.

Our client is a leading global retailer with 300+ stores and revenue in excess of €6bn that has experienced significant growth. It offers a diverse range of products, including clothing, homewares, accessories, beauty products and confectionery.

The Challenges

Traditionally, the retailer had not invested heavily in non-retail-facing customer experience. Regional support services for customers were sporadic and inconsistent. At one point, there were over 5,000 emails that had not been read. At another location, customer support ceased for a period of six weeks without the central customer support function being made aware of the stoppage. There was a lack of formalised internal processes to manage customer queries from point of receipt to resolution. The lack of a centralised tool to manage queries meant that the retailer was unable to produce meaningful management information for team managers, and the wider business.

What We Did

We worked with the retailer to create a target operating model to support the needs of customers contacting the company via social media. We achieved this by:

• Working with a third-party supplier to develop insights on why customers were contacting the retailer.
• Documenting ‘as is’ processes and conducting an assessment to determine where challenges existed in the current operating model that would need to be addressed in a future design.
• Becoming subject matter experts in a leading cloud-based customer service platform, enabling us to develop training material and working procedures.
• Facilitating workshops with key internal stakeholders to define new work processes, and how work would flow between the newly expanded customer experience team and internal departments.
• Aligning and managing three key workstreams – business, IT and outsourcer – in developing clearly articulated milestone plans, a project plan, and managing these plans through to ‘go-live’.

The Outcomes

The team is now working from a centralised location and all customer queries are managed to strict service level agreements. This enables a standardisation of how customer experience is delivered by the retailer across its entire geographical footprint, while also enabling growth into new territories and channels as the business develops in the future. The new model allows the retailer to engage with customers in a more meaningful way and further drive brand value. It also highlighted the importance of managing the brand's social media presence to mitigate brand-damaging incidents and making the most of positive social media interactions.

With 2017 water legislation in the UK looming, providing value-added services have become critical to the competitiveness of retail service providers. Our client one of the largest water companies in the UK decided to extend their services by helping their customers to reduce costs and make their business more sustainable. Their aim was to launch comprehensive water and wastewater management solution services within a six-month timescale.

The challenges

We were charged to realise this ambition within six months. We needed to ensure unique operational practices are in place for the new business entity to operate side-by-side with the regulatory business. Within this, we had to ensure compliance with the regulated market, as well as implementing the programme in a scalable manner.

What we did

We started by designing a blueprint for selling and fulfilling day one service delivery and securing a small team of experts. We then drew up the roadmap to achieve our client’s goals within the tight timescale of six months and focussed on the commitments, SLAs and KPIs that needed to be in place for the new business unit. We believe that dependable and reliable service delivery is the foundation of building and maintaining the trust of our customers. We designed the business model based on this principle. To ensure all commitments to customers are met, we designed and implemented a CRM sales management tool.

We also led the recruitment of new staff into key posts and mobilised the team into their new roles before handing over the management responsibilities to the newly established leadership team.

The outcome

The new business service offers were successfully launched on time, offering water and waste management services, and the customer portfolio and service delivery options have continued to grow since the launch.