Issue: Improve call center response rates, increase on-time delivery of special orders, and raise overall customer satisfaction scores in line with status of being a world-class product manufacturer.

Solution: Identify what good service looked like from a customer’s perspective and then develop the internal systems and procedures needed to support the new levels of service.

Results: Call center abandonment reduced from 5.68% to 1.8%, and on-time delivery percentage of special orders increased from 85% to over 99.8%. Company ranked #1 in customer service when compared to competitors—up from #4 when the cause to change the culture around the customer began.

By most measures, TaylorMade-adidas Golf was at the top of its game. The billion-dollar golf equipment and apparel company was known for having some of the best products in the business, its brand was strong, and endorsements among professional tour players was one of the best in the industry.

But in one area, the company was not performing at the level it should. As Brad Barnett, Senior Vice President of Global Operations explains, “We surveyed our customers, and they said, “You get in “A” in product performance and innovation, you get an “A” in tour validation of your product, but in terms of the way that you connect with us, the way that you appreciate and deliver for us—
you get a “C.”

The customer survey showed that the company was not fully executing in the area of customer service. Customers pointed to slower than anticipated call center response times and inconsistent on-time delivery of special-order
apparel for tournaments as evidence.

Mark King, President and CEO, knew that the people in the company’s Carlsbad campus were not understanding and connecting with customers at the level the customers deserved. In King’s mind, the time had come to address the issue head-on. The company had to maintain the cultural alignment around creating and delivering world-class products to the marketplace and add to that valuing every single customer. As he explains, “We needed to wake our organization up in terms of how we were really executing our business.”

The Solution

Barnett saw the change in two clear components, culture and capabilities. The primary focus would be to identify what good customer service looked like from the perspective of the customer and then look at developing the internal systems and procedures needed to support those levels of service. Success was to be defined primarily by “what we do differently” with some energy around “how we do it.”

Barnett pitched the idea to King. It was clear from the start of the discussion that they saw the path to success very differently. Instead of a focus on capabilities, King recommended that they start by addressing culture and completely redefining how people view their roles in the company and ultimately how they define success.

As King told Barnett, “This is about what people believe. This is about how they walk in the door every morning. This is about how they engage with and appreciate our customers.”

As Barnett explains, “King wanted to find a way to inspire people to appreciate each other and appreciate our customers in a completely different way and channel that into our business. He believed that if we fixed the cultural piece then we would continue to choose and execute the right things from a capability standpoint.”

To help with the change, TaylorMade turned to a long-time partner, The Ken Blanchard Companies. With the help of Blanchard consultants, the two men put together a plan that would focus first on culture and then on capabilities. In a unique twist, they would also include the entire organization in coming up with the solution instead of delegating the responsibility to a customer service team or committee. The goal was to tap into the passion that existed throughout the company so that it could be channeled into serving customers—both internally and externally.

It’s Everyone—Always

To help all employees remember that service is everyone’s job and not just a part-time endeavor, the company coined the mantra, “It’s everyone, always.” Using The Ken Blanchard Company’s Legendary Service program as the training component of the initiative, the new service improvement plan would focus on three areas:

1. Identifying direct and indirect customers and making sure that everyone understands his or her role in the service delivery chain
2. Providing outstanding service to every customer—internal or external—to foster a unique service culture throughout the business
3. Developing internal systems or procedures to support new levels of customer service

All 800 employees located at the company’s Southern California campus were required to participate in the Legendary Service training. Per the instructions of the course, all departments created action plans at its conclusion and several follow-up meetings were held to monitor progress.

The Results

The results have been outstanding in all of the areas that the company hoped to impact—call center response and abandon rates, tournament order fulfillment, and overall customer satisfaction. As Barnett explains, “We drove the abandon rate in the call center down from 5.68% to 1.8%, which means that we touched our customers, and we’ve listened to our customers another 20,000 times every year.”

In addition, the company is now at the top of its game with respect to servicing tournament orders. The company moved from not specifically measuring tournament delivery performance to having missed just 11 orders in the last 36 months out of the approximately 7,000 tournament orders it has serviced in that time frame. There were also dramatic improvements in consistently shipping custom-fitted clubs within 48 hours of receiving the order, providing timely and accurate product availability dates to customers on out-of-stock items, and delivery of customer orders on time and in full.

Finally, and most gratifying for the company, is that customer service surveys sent out to accounts show that customers have noticed the difference. From finishing fourth when the initiative began, TaylorMade improved to second place the following year, and in the fall of the next year came in first in the competitive ranking with the other major golf brands.

Looking Ahead

So where does TaylorMade-adidas Golf go from here? Having achieved its initial goals, it might be expected that the company would take a well-deserved moment to reflect back on the journey and enjoy its accomplishment. While the company has celebrated its success and is doing a good job of ensuring that the numbers are maintained every day, the cultural side, the belief, the behavioral change side, is something that TaylorMade continues to work to keep alive.

As Barnett explains, “We face the challenge that all companies face in really delivering meaningful long-term change. We are three years in and we do not consider ourselves done by any means. In fact, we say, it’s absolutely a journey and not a destination. We call it a cause to change our culture, not an initiative, for a reason.”