Lunch & Learn Facilitator’s Guide

Hopefully you have taken the time to read the performance feedback provided in the Voice of Your Customer section of the StrengtheningBrandAmerica.com website.  It provides comments from site selection consultants and other customers on what economic development professionals should stop doing that is getting in the way of success, start doing to enhance customer service, or keep doing because it is appreciated by your customers.

Nothing is more useful than hearing an objective assessment of your Organization’s performance directly from your customers.  Unfortunately, this isn’t always easy to obtain.  If your Organization performs poorly and there is a competitive alternative that performs better, the typical customer attitude is to minimize the amount of time invested with you and your team.  Net, your competitor ends up with a better relationship with your customer and, as a consequence, a marketplace advantage.  Often the only way you realize something isn’t right is when you’ve lost enough opportunities that it becomes too obvious to ignore.

The Voice of Your Customer is a tool to help you improve your Organization performance before it becomes problematic and your competition gains an edge.

But, customer insight is only truly valuable if you take action on it.  One way to use the Voice of Your Customer performance feedback is to lead your Organization through a Lunch & Learn exercise to identify practical opportunities for process and tactical improvement that your customer’s are telling you are important to their satisfaction.

Coordinating and leading a Lunch & Learn session is not hard.  And to make it even easier, I am providing a Powerpoint presentation and Facilitator Guide (see notes for each slide in the presentation).

The plan is to generate enough input from customers throughout the year that you can schedule 2 – 3 Lunch & Learn sessions to help continuously improve your Operational work processes. You might want to rotate the leadership of each session as a way to help foster ownership in implementing the outcomes.

Having 2 – 3 Lunch & Learns on this topic during the year will help reinforce the concept of continual improvement in your Organization’s culture.  It should result in increased self-directed problem solving and elimination of work associated with ineffective processes and practices.  All of these outcomes are capacity enhancers.

Facilitator’s Guide

Download the PowerPoint presentation here.

How You Can Help

Leave a comment and share your experience in leading a Lunch & Learn session in your Organization.  Any tips you have on how to even better facilitate a session would be great.  In addition, please encourage your site selection consultants contacts to consider writing a few paragraphs for the Voice of Your Customer section of the website.  The more customers we get involved, the more useful the feedback will be.

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