Customer Success: habits can be good

The copious amount of sunshine we’ve had this week has brought with it new sights outside the Alliantist office. Since we’re nestled in the Sussex Innovation Centre at the top of the University of Sussex’s campus, I’ve been able to observe some Spring habits occurring out the window: spiders constructing complex webs, bluebells erupting in beautiful violet hues, students throwing Frisbees in the grass on their lunch break.

Though it’s been a short and beautiful week, it’s been a busy one here at Alliantist. I’ve been talking with customers here in the Southern Region about how pam can facilitate multi-agency working in terms of Restorative Justice, Integrated Offender Management and Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements. Meanwhile, my counterpart in the Northern Region met with a PCC to do a “what’s pamable” session, and she also met with several Trusts to help them think about how they’re managing accounts with the new Contracts Enhancement in place. She’s been so busy that on one occasion, she only had 5 minutes to quickly eat her lunch!

Though skipping lunch isn’t a good habit to get into, we’ve been talking about habits quite a bit lately. In fact, one of my colleagues has been reading a book called The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg1, which defines habits as “the choices that all of us deliberately make at some point, and then stop thinking about but continue doing, often every day.” This automatic behaviour can have a negative effect if it leads to adverse outcomes, but it can also be very positive. To that end, I thought I would share some of the good habits I’ve instilled into my daily work routine with pam:

1) After turning on my computer in the morning, the first thing I do is open pam alongside my email. And I keep them both open side-by-side in separate tabs all day. That way I can see in real-time the work that is being done and the communication being sent. It just means my finger’s always on the pulse of what’s going on in my organisation and with my customers.

2) I regularly customise my pam homepage with the work I access most frequently. You can edit each widget on your homepage to show which Projects, Programmes, Alliances, Accounts, Groups, etc. you use on a regular basis. By keeping my homepage updated, it means my most important work is always in front of me, and it keeps me in the habit of staying on top of my most pressing initiatives.

3) For the most part, I replace phone calls with discussions in pam. This saves me work by not needing to duplicate the results of a phone call for other people involved in the initiative. Of course, if the subject matter is too complicated for a discussion, I won’t hesitate to pick up the phone. But anything I can do to save myself some time, I’ll do.

Now that I’ve consistently used these practices, they are second-nature for me, and I do them without thinking. I’m sure I didn’t work quite as elegantly when I first started working at Alliantist, but my good habits mean I work more efficiently and therefore have more time to initiate other good habits. Like eating lunch!

Duhigg, Charles. The Power of Habit. London: Random House, 2012.

We won't share your details with anyone else.