Christina Porter, the President of Stallergenes Greer Canada and Vice President of Strategy for Stallergenes Greer North America. The company provides therapies to help improve life for people who suffer from allergies. In 2017, Stallergenes Greer acquired a successful family-owned Canadian company to create a fully integrated Canadian operation. The company encountered several challenges during the transition that required them to take some steps back and re-engineer customer-centric processes, in order to grow and improve service quality and customer experience. And that’s the focus of this episode of What’s Your Edge?

Christina, we are grateful that you are willing to share the challenges you faced as a result of the acquisition. Every company we’ve ever worked with that has gone through a merger or acquisition has told us that the integration process was anything but a cakewalk. Some of the issues we’ve heard companies have faced post-merger include cultural clashes, talent loss, customer retention issues, integration cost overruns, and integration fatigue. All of these can impact the customer experience and impede growth.

What can you share about the situation you were facing during the transition?

It’s all the things you mentioned and in a predictable pattern (although in our naïve optimism, we didn’t predict it, unfortunately!):

First: culture clashes: we are a global company purchasing a 2nd generation family business- our expectations regarding policies, procedures, documentation, decision making, almost everything were different, and it was a very uncomfortable, tense time for everyone

Second: talent loss: The natural progression of culture clash is talent loss, and when most of the company’s intellectual capital is institutional knowledge, that’s a huge problem.   We lost the 2 owners very quickly, despite our expectation of a 2-year transition.  And many of the key people followed right behind, taking their institutional knowledge with them.

Third: production/delivery disruption.  Without the key players in the company, we rapidly became unable to fulfill orders. 

Fourth: customer dissatisfaction – you can imagine how our customers reacted.

Fifth: more disruption and delay caused by managing angry customers, and trying band-aid, reactionary solutions- training new employees, adding shifts, hiring consultants.

In my career and as part of our work, we’re big proponents of service quality. In the book, “Delivering Quality Service, “ first published in 1990, based on the authors’ research found that reliability and responsiveness account for over 50% of how customers evaluate service quality. What kind of data was your team seeing that indicated you had a service quality process issue that needed to be addressed?

Well, the first and most obvious source of “data” was the phone lines and voice mailboxes.  The phones never stopped ringing with complaints, and as fast as we were answering calls in person, more calls were filling the voice mailbox- to the point there was no physical way to answer everything- and anyway, we couldn’t answer the main question we were being asked – we called it WISMO- where’s my order???

The next was the very visual signal of orders piling up. Our orders mainly came in via fax at that time, and they were literally spilling and piling up on the floor, surrounding desks, and any other flat surface. In fact, our first initiative was to create a filing system just to hold backlogged orders- there were hundreds of them. We called it Bertha!

As we tried to solve problems, it quickly became obvious that we actually didn’t have the data we needed to pinpoint exactly where things were going wrong and therefore where we should prioritize our efforts.  It was a sobering time when we came to the realization that we couldn’t just work harder to get out of the situation we were in.  Instead, we needed to take a step back and become very analytical to make a sustainable solution.

You’re singing our song about taking a step back and being analytical.  As you analyzed the data, what decisions did you make?

We knew we had to carve out time to dissect every part of the business if we were going to improve- to get that time, we had to make the very painful decision to reduce the number of customers we could serve.  This led to some difficult, but honest discussions with valued partners to tell them they should go elsewhere because we could not serve them the way they deserved.  We counted on the fact that this transparency would serve us well when we were back on our feet and could reach back out for their support.   

We also had to purposely part ways with some long-standing but draining customer accounts where we couldn’t negotiate for a solution that worked in the new reality.

I know you had relationships with many of the clinicians and medical groups you serve. Being a customer-oriented person, I imagine “firing” customers was a very difficult decision for you. We believe that credibility and transparency are critical to maintaining market and customer trust during tough decisions. Beyond lost revenue, what was the impact of the decision on the organization, and what did you do to maintain customer trust?

Yes, this was such a difficult period of time for me and all our employees, especially because the business was built on customer service, and this is a core value for our leaders and all the people we hire.

The truth is, there was a significant loss of trust as we found our footing, and it was frankly embarrassing. But once the decision was made, we focused on being open and transparent about our situation, communicated regularly about the work we were doing to improve things, brought customers along with our vision as we innovated and finally, provided objective metrics to prove that when we asked them to come back, they could be confident in what to expect.

Take Me to Advisory Services

There’s a process for analyzing the process and getting to the root cause.  What did you and your team do to analyze the entire process to understand what was creating the service quality problem and close the critical gaps?

We started with pure data collection at each point in the production process so that we could start to get a handle on what was going on and create a baseline.  Things like how many calls we are getting, how many orders, how many corrections, what kind of mistakes, how much time every step takes, etc.

Next, we attempted to simply see where the easiest and most obvious places to make improvements would be, we picked the “low-hanging fruit.”

But then we moved on to the detailed work of process mapping using six sigma tools such as value stream mapping, 7 wastes, 5S, etc.

It sounds like you employed the power of process mapping. All businesses run on processes. Process mapping provides a clear roadmap for improvement and optimization. What steps did you take to reengineer the process, and how did you envision the revised process would improve the customer experience?

We reengineered the org chart for role clarity, we re-designed the physical space for efficiency, we instituted a data management system so documents could be found easily and electronically, we standardized the ordering process, we introduced a prioritization protocol for order processing, we questioned the rationale for everything, we deleted and deleted and deleted any redundant steps or touchpoints we documented everything and created training metrics so skills became transferable and are reproducible, we added clear metrics at each stage of the process and instituted a bonus program that paid for performance, we created transparent dashboards and shared access to information with all employees so they could see the progress and we opened a formal process for feedback for continuous improvement.

Today, we are industry leaders in quality, consistency, and speed of delivery. When customers came back, they got what they were promised plus more.

In addition to clarifying gaps, process mapping creates opportunities for operational excellence. Did you find that this exercise helped align your team and streamline decision-making?

This is very true.  When we began this transformation, we thought we were just trying to get back to the way things were before the disruptions created by the integration, but what we discovered was that there were multiple ways to surpass good to become excellent by making the right decisions on where to focus our energy.

From a practical standpoint, once our teams could see the quantitative data, we could set ambitious goals to improve. We found that people became very engaged in making suggestions for incremental improvements in their day-to-day work- it’s now a very motivating part of our culture.  Teams are encouraged, empowered, and rewarded for implementing process improvements that streamline our offering. And because of the dashboards and other reporting tools we created, they can really see when their projects lead to real benefits for customers.

Tell us a little more about the steps you took to reengineer the process and how you imagined the revised process would improve the customer experience.

In our business, there are two things our customers care about: Quality and speed.  They need to be confident that what they order will be made correctly, using the highest standards, and that they will consistently receive their orders in the expected timeframe.  We worked to improve both of these areas.  In an interesting dichotomy, these two things often run at cross purposes.  High quality takes time, and you can gain speed by compromising on quality. When deciding where to focus, we took the decision to never compromise on quality and to manage expectations on speed.

We communicated clearly with our customers about the quality improvements we were making, and we vowed to offer the most transparency in the industry, often educating customers on best practices.  In this way, our customers could be assured, confident, and knowledgeable about what they were getting.  And we let them know what kind of trade-off this emphasis on quality would require.  So instead of going for record-breaking or even industry-leading speed, we promised consistency.

This combination, consistent delivery plus the highest quality product, turned out to be the winning formula.

You have shared a lot with us today about process engineering. What advice would you give to someone who is going to reengineer a process?

This is hard work that takes patience, persistence, and so much communication inside and outside of the organization.  It’s detailed work that takes precision.   It’s rewarding, but it can feel like you are taking one step forward and two steps back, and for people who are builders, as most entrepreneurs and CEOs are, this can be draining.

I think it’s worthwhile to hire someone with the right skills and mindset to both lead and manage this type of transformation.  Operational excellence is not a one-and-done type of event, instead, it should be seen as foundation building and continuous improvement.  This will give you the satisfaction of serving your customers in a consistent and high-quality manner they deserve- and that will mean you can spend your time business building, confident of the commitments you can make and the difference you can ultimately make in the world.

Reengineering the process was quite an undertaking. I imagine the next challenge was to win back customers. In our experience, we’ve seen that regaining customer trust and loyalty after a major transition requires a strategic blend of customer-centricity, clear communication, and delivering measurable value.

We’ve found that incorporating the voice of the customer can be a game-changer for identifying gaps and improving customer experience. Did you leverage any customer feedback mechanisms, like surveys or advisory boards, to guide your decisions during this time?

I think we were afraid to ask for the voice of the customer!  Actually, it would be a good idea to do that now. Now that our processes have become so standardized, we’re able to implement change without disruption – we’d be able to act on any feedback we receive.

I will say that we get excellent feedback from the field about our offerings and especially about our customer service. It’s a great feeling to send salespeople out, knowing that they ask customers to come back with confidence.  It speaks volumes about the level of trust we garnered by being so transparent about our struggles.

The company is growing, so clearly the process and the strategy worked. What strategy and steps did you take to bring customers back and accelerate sales?

Even though it was painful, we stuck to the strategy of reducing volume, re-engineering our processes, transparently communicating with customers during the bad times, and creating systems for measuring everything.  We’re now able to back up our claims of quality and service with data and leverage word of mouth recommendations from new and returning customers.  We’re growing, and I guess it turns out that sometimes you have to go backward to go forward.

Is there any final piece of advice or insight you’d like to leave our community with?

I’ve had so many learnings from this experience but the thing that lives in my heart is that even though business can be cutthroat, in the end, if customers trust and believe that your true core value is to put them at the center of what you do, they will give you a second chance- even if you royally mess up!

Christina, thank you for sharing your insights and experiences. It’s clear that Stallergenes Greer Canada’s journey required emphasizing data and customer-centric processes to overcome challenges and achieve growth. Your story reminds us that while change is never easy, it can lead to significant improvements in customer experience and business performance. I admire your willingness to embrace a bold initiative to eliminate the chaos of random acts—those reactive, short-term fixes that drain resources and erode trust.

If your organization is stuck in a cycle of random acts and reactionary measures, or trying to navigate growth, integration, or customer service challenges, now is the time to take a deliberate step toward operational excellence.  Let’s talk about how we can help you reengineer your processes with a deliberate, customer-centric strategy that drives measurable growth and lasting customer trust.