Case Study British Gas: A master coach approach to introduce a new way of working

British Gas started an extensive and innovative national programme with the intention of increasing performance, reducing costs and improving customer satisfaction in their central heating repair and maintenance business. This was to be achieved by transferring technical skills to the customer-facing teams.

I led this intensive coaching programme to transfer technical skills and project management methodology in the Leeds region. I worked with a team of 13 British Gas master coaches and impacted circa 1,200 customer service engineers. The engineers were encouraged to change their way of working and hence becoming more effective and act in a more customer-orientated way. Together we achieved sustainable behavioural change amongst the customer service engineers and their management team.

My activities included the introduction of management tools such as: to develop and implement a system for the regular review and control of relevant key performance indicators; the transfer of problem solving techniques; and the improvement of management skills amongst the leadership team. These efforts resulted in the significant improvement of the key performance indicators (e.g. first time completion rate, recall rate, customer satisfaction).

“Cathrin has strong project management skills, she never looses sight of the goal, she gives honest feedback and gives us food for discussion. She encouraged us to share “best practice” with other regions, which has generated a lot of positive ideas for our business.” – customer quote Carl Watson, Service Manager Leeds, British Gas