Want to have robust relationships with your customers? Deepen relationships and connectivity between internal departments and people who contribute to the customer experience.

Sounds backwards, right? Companies tend to focus on the single department or individual with primary contact and interactions with customers. But that’s just the tip of the customer relationship iceberg. It’s the relationships inside the organization that generate a market-differentiating client experience.

Shake Up The Old Employee Off-Site Meeting with Intentional Gatherings

Recently, my company, CoachSource LLC, brought together our client services teams with some of our executive coaches who coach leaders at our client organizations. We’re the largest pure-play executive coaching provider to senior executives and the c-suite in companies around the world.

We’re a 100% virtual workplace, so our interactions between client services teams and our coaches are by emails, phone calls, and videoconferences. But periodically, we bring the two internal groups together to leverage their combined wisdom to ensure an exceptional customer experience…and to learn how we can think ahead of our customers and be prepared for their next challenge.

We gathered both internal groups in person in Dublin, Ireland for two days of strengthening the connectivity between the executive coaches and client services teams.

What makes this different from an employee offsite? Well, a lot! We created intentional interactions to serve our business purpose: co-create an internal forum that improves the customer experience with these combined groups that expands our current thinking and assumptions about customer satisfaction and engagement.

Five Elements for Your Company’s Next Intentional Gathering

Here’s our blueprint for this gathering, and it might spark your thinking about your next in-person gathering to improve ways internal departments create your customers’ experience.

1. Learning Together is Thinking Together – Some of the two days were spent learning from thought leaders with cutting edge ideas that help our clients realize meaningful impact in their business. We raised the thinking and learning of our client services teams and our executive coaches as they discussed and debated ways to deliver exceptional coaching and client impact. We leveraged neuroscience to get our brains in learning mode so we’re naturally more curious, likely to have insights that improve the ways we work and rethink our assumptions and biases – all while we are in the same room with others who can help us implement our new thinking.
2. Bonds Blossom at Breaks – We created thirty-minute to forty-five-minute breaks between sessions that fostered conversations and deepened the bonds between client services teams and coaches. Giving people plenty of unstructured time to have casual conversations and follow-up with each other moves ideas and solutions forward. Participants will explore ideas, make decisions, and take action to improve the client experience if we give them space and time to interact.
3. Bring the Voice of the Customer Into the Room – Gather customer insights and recent changes in their needs, then bring their voice into the room for the internal teams to discuss. Our Client Services Team led a panel and group discussion to share customer insights and changing needs with our coaches, staff, and executive team. The open forum created dialogue and generated some solutions that would not have otherwise surfaced.
4. Quality Time – Not Marathon Days and Packed Agendas – It seems efficient to start these events early in the morning and continue right through an evening dinner each day, but that only drains everyone’s energy and attention. We scheduled an optional breakfast at 8 AM, began our day of interactions and learning at 9 AM, and ended at 4 PM – with long breaks throughout the day. The flow of the day helped people maintain focus, redirect their attention with ease, and re-energize their thinking throughout the day. If you’re spending more time in the meeting room in a day than outside the meeting room, you’re exhausting everyone’s thinking and limiting their time to socialize, relax, and sleep.
5. Speakers Who Spark New Solutions – Not "Like Us" Speakers – We invited external speakers who are provocative in topics that are challenging for our clients. They sparked our thinking and got us out of our current comfort zones. For example, Carol Braddick shared a universal perspective of technology in coaching, but from an executive coach point of view and how coachees are experiencing digital support and solutions. Philippe Rosinski shared a unique and next-generation approach to inclusion and cultural awareness to help customers beyond their traditional thinking (and sometimes legislatively constrained actions) about inclusion. Instead of engaging speakers who are "like our company and culture," engage speakers who know what your clients are grappling with, the next thing clients need from you that you're not aware of, and speakers who spark new thinking and actions in your client-facing departments. What's the one thing you need to rethink about your next team meeting or employee gathering? Share your ideas and results in the comments!

#IntentionalGatherings #IntentionalInteractions #CustomerExperience #ExecutiveCoaching #Coaching