“I’ve worked with Janet LeBlanc before, during the City of Ottawa’s G33 Economic Development Stakeholder Collaboration Group. I liked her style. What Janet does very well is to get participants to drill down to the key drivers and focus on a clear direction. She’s very plugged in to economic development, but without passing judgment or interjecting with her own opinions. That’s important if these sessions are to be productive.

“When I was Executive Director of the Kanata North Business Association, we were already two or three years into our strategic plan. We recognized that there were some overlaps with other organizations and opportunities to collaborate, lead or follow. We wanted to determine where our energies could be best spent and where we could add the most value in our business community. We engaged Janet LeBlanc + Associates to help guide us through that strategic decision.

“Janet was a good fit. She was incredibly professional and very thoughtful. Leading up to the actual strategic planning session, Janet met with me and connected one-on-one with other board members. She developed a questionnaire for us and compiled all of our input so she could hit the ground running once the strategic session started.

“In only a few hours, Janet took us through a ranking exercise to help us prioritize initiatives, achieve clarity about our mandate and stakeholder groups, and arrive at a consensus about the strategic direction that was best for our board, our members and the business community.

“All in all, Janet was terrific!”

Jenna Sudds
Past Executive Director
Kanata North BIA

The Kanata North Business Association (KNBIA) strives to create an environment where people want to work and advocates for business success. Representing the best interests of Kanata North’s renowned hub of technology and innovation, the KNBIA facilitates connections for over 500 member companies while promoting awareness and building community pride.

“There were many of us who related to the models Janet LeBlanc proposed. She clearly understands that models resonate with the university culture. All the pieces were included in the framework—themes that allowed us to identify short, medium and long-term priorities and develop action plans for them. When we presented the final dashboard to the faculties and services, it made sense to them. We felt Janet’s overall approach was inclusive, clear and achievable.

“Janet’s experience with other large organizations was extremely helpful. She worked closely with us, providing guidance on what to focus on next and where to put greater emphasis. Janet had the knowledge and expertise to help us move forward, create momentum, and make noticeable improvements to the student experience.”

Lucie Mercier-Gauthier
Associate Vice-President, Student Services
uOttawa

The University of Ottawa is the largest bilingual (French-English) university in the world, delivering quality education to over 10,000 enrolled students in more than 450 programs. The university has earned wide recognition as a top 200 university globally, a top 10 Canadian research-intensive university, and a top employer in the National Capital Region.

“We knew that customer satisfaction is only part of it. We needed to figure out how to improve a guest’s overall experience, earn their loyalty and also have them refer us to others. It sounds straightforward in principle, but how do you actually make that happen?

“Janet LeBlanc knew how to interpret our data in meaningful ways and her recommendations on how to grow our customer experience reputation worked extremely well for us. Our biggest success and lesson is that developing a detailed guest service strategy is not only good business—it’s the way to stay on top of business.”

John Jarvis
Former General Manager and Chief Experience Officer
The Westin Ottawa

The Westin Ottawa is a luxury, full-service hotel that offers stunning, panoramic views of the Nation’s Capital. Located in the heart of downtown, The Westin Ottawa is an award-winning, eco-friendly venue of choice to host meetings, conferences and special events. The Westin® brand is among several owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts, one of the leading hotel and leisure companies in the world.

“We engaged Janet LeBlanc + Associates because we wanted an experienced business and customer experience strategist to help our team become more proactive in dealing with the needs of the people we serve.

“Meaningful engagement with our leadership team began at the very first meeting. In the strategy session, Janet helped us define what we needed to do in order to achieve our strategic objectives. Next, she helped us break things down into tasks and define who was going to take ownership of each task. It was a very collaborative experience.

“Janet and her team were very organized in their approach. They performed an audit of 100-200 calls and examined all the inquiries and responses that came into and out of our office within a 12-month period. They synthesized that data and were able to provide key insights into how to dramatically improve the customer experience.

“The results of the audit helped us identify the challenges that we may have from both a staffing perspective and a customer experience perspective. For example, we discovered that people prefer to look up answers and do their own research online rather than call us. By putting clear answers to the most common questions into a self-serve environment, we were not only freeing up valuable resources, but we were also serving our customers better.

“Working with Janet was very enlightening. Based on what I’ve heard from our support team, what we learned has helped us make tremendous improvements.”

Marc N. Lafrance
Director, Marketing and Member Services
Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA)

As one of Canada’s largest single-industry trade associations, the Canadian Real Estate Association’s membership includes more than 100,000 real estate brokers, agents and salespeople who work through 100 real estate boards and associations across Canada. CREA’s staff responds to an average of about 3,000 calls per month.

“Janet LeBlanc + Associates helped the City of Ottawa’s Service Innovation and Performance Department develop an innovation strategy and plan.  Janet was able to distill all of the work and effort that we’ve been putting forward, across a variety of areas, and focus them into common thinking and common objectives.  She helped us create a roadmap of change as we move forward.

“With respect to leadership engagement, Janet designed a series of workshops to move the senior leadership team through a number of strategic conversations. She helped us align our perspectives and thinking on some really core, fundamental pieces of our strategy. The sessions were designed in such a way as to increase our own collaboration and alignment as a team, as well as to allow us to come to a consensus on a vision. Overall, she brings discussion and dialogue to the session, and she brings it back to a very pragmatic, results-focused final product.

“Janet has an incredible understanding and knowledge of community dynamics and the priorities of different groups that are forming in the community. She has been able to understand our vision very quickly, and bring together stakeholder analysis, client experience research and industry best practices to tease out the core elements in a really clear and crisp way.

“What Janet brought to the table was her ability to conduct evidence-based research around core thinking that is happening in similar industries, including the public sector industry and the wider marketplace. She was able to pull some key articles that acted as paradigms, frameworks or models—articles that my team and I could use to start to shape our vision.  Then she showed us how that vision could translate into an executable plan.

“Janet brings to us a well-rounded set of skills. Strategic thinking, collaboration and facilitation all helped us work as a group through a process, but the flexibility she uses in her approach and the final product isn’t a boiler plate product—it is designed and developed to meet the needs of my department and ultimately the organization.”

Donna Gray
General Manager, Service Innovation and Performance Department
City of Ottawa

The City of Ottawa is home to close to one million people and is the fourth largest municipality in the country. It spans an area larger than Vancouver, Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary and Montreal combined.

“We got to a point where we absolutely needed greater clarity and reorganization on many fronts—from streamlining and reassigning hundreds of roles and responsibilities within our organizational structure to determining how best to redefine and deliver our service offerings in a consistent manner. We had achieved a lot during our formative years and now needed to take Service Canada College to the next level.

“Janet LeBlanc was brilliant at facilitating our strategic sessions and helping us move forward with clarity and a well-organized action plan. One on one, she is very thought-provoking and drives the conversation forward without being challenging. In a group setting, she is effective at bringing different ideas to the table, keeping everyone on track and creating a strong sense of engagement and ownership from all participants… Janet exceeded our expectations.”

Susan Ingram
Senior Director General
Service Canada College

Service Canada College@ HRSDC (SCC@HRSDC) is a national corporate learning institution responsible for developing learning policies, guidelines, standards and tools in support of the consistent implementation of Service Canada’s vision for advancing the innovative use of learning technologies and e-learning.

“As a public-facing company offering a very important service in a heavily-regulated industry, we have high standards of accountability. We need to be able to deploy our crews to the right place quickly, and we have to be communicating instantly via multiple channels to our customers during a blackout.

“We always thought that we were a customer-focused business—but we knew we could do better. We have 700 employees serving over 330,000 customers and responding to over 300,000 enquiries annually. It’s not just about whether we can answer the telephone quickly and be pleasant. We needed to ask ourselves: What does our company need to look at as a whole in order to offer a true customer experience?

“That’s why we turned to Janet Leblanc + Associates.

“Janet’s approach was collaborative from the start. She guided a strategic discussion with senior members of a cross-functional team. She helped us engage many parts of our organization: operational people, our lines people, our communications people, our IT experts, and obviously our customer service staff. For this to work, we all needed to be on board.

“One of the reasons Janet’s approach worked for us was because she immersed herself in our business. She stepped through our processes as a customer. She studied documentation and training materials, and became familiar with our terminology, technology and processes.

“Janet and her team helped shape our customer experience strategy and goals, helped define the ideal customer experience, reviewed our conditions of service, guided us through the journey mapping process, and conducted a ‘Voice of the Customer assessment’.

“Janet helped us develop strategies that are totally in line with who we are at our core. She expertly balanced the needs of our customers and the needs of our business throughout.”

Dave McKendry
Director Customer Service
Hydro Ottawa

Hydro Ottawa Holding Inc. (Hydro Ottawa) is a regulated electricity distribution company operating in the City of Ottawa and the Village of Casselman. Founded in 1916, Ottawa Hydro (now Hydro Ottawa) has grown to become the largest local distribution company in eastern Ontario and the third-largest municipally-owned LDC in the province.  Its 700 employees serve 330,300 total customers representing 302,000 residential, 24,770 small commercial and 3,300 large commercial users over a 1,116 square kilometre service area. Its recent projects include a large-scale solar rooftop initiative intended to reduce green houses gasses by approximately 41,000 metric tonnes over a 20-year term.

“Janet didn’t come to our gallery with a pre-packaged solution to our problems. She took the time to talk to the stakeholders, to understand us and our DNA. It was clear that Janet was looking for a solution tailored for the National Gallery of Canada. She performed consultations from top to bottom. I think that was the right approach. That’s probably why it was so successful.

“Janet was completely immersed. She attended every exhibition and any events we were doing to really understand us. Instead of asking a couple of people a couple of questions, she experienced it for herself. She became a member. She came to members’ evenings. She came as an anonymous visitor. So it was a lot more than coming in, giving some advice and leaving. She was totally immersed in the National Gallery operations.

“Janet is extremely professional, knowledgeable, pragmatic, thorough, and engaging—and I think engaging is the key word. As a facilitator, I attended every single workshop and meeting. A full-day workshop is not easy to keep people’s attention and participation, but she engaged staff from all levels, and from all departments, from senior management to front-line staff. The material that Janet provided was organized, visually interesting and relevant.

“I got a lot of positive feedback and thanks from staff. The workshops were very interactive. Participants felt their voice was heard. It’s not every day you have a room with a security person or a front-line staff and the CEO or a director brainstorming at the same table, and yet Janet was able to get people to talk and to feel free to express themselves. It was very impressive.

“Working on the visitor-centric journey initiative meant that Janet was able to understand who we are and our goals, so it was a natural continuation to work with her on the brand strategy. She has excellent experience in marketing and is an expert in her field. Through her own experience and by connecting with National Gallery staff, Janet was able to help us define the real brand of the National Gallery. She was able to get consensus among people who have different views and helped people agree on a brand direction. That took a lot of tact, and she was very good at it. It was quite an achievement.”

Jean-François Bilodeau
Deputy Director, Advancement and Public Engagement
National Gallery of Canada

The National Gallery of Canada is Canada’s premier art gallery—a place to experience Canada’s rich visual arts heritage while inspiring and connecting us to the world. Housed in a glass and granite building within view spectacular views, the Gallery is focused on making art accessible, meaningful and vital to diverse audiences of all ages. Although its focus is on Canadian paintings, drawings, sculpture and photographs, it holds works by many noted American and European artists.

“I heard Janet LeBlanc speak a few years back at a summit for customer experience professionals. What she said immediately struck me. She understood the challenges of working with senior leaders to try to shift the culture and get the organization to become customer-centric. I thought, ‘she could be talking about my senior leaders and all the challenges I face.

“She just resonated perfectly with me. She has the deep expertise around customer experience as well as in the areas of planning, strategy, performance, and design. She brings them all to bear in a very pragmatic way that helps an organization begin its journey.

“Janet’s first engagement with Johnson & Johnson was during a multi-day strategy session within our Customer & Logistics Services leaders—customer service, logistics, last mile of the supply chain. She was able to connect our leaders to what they need to do in order to be a truly customer-centric organization.

“Janet excelled at focusing the senior leaders’ attention on where we were and the areas we needed to look at first. Her ability to bring in her expertise, real-world experience and stories really made things tangible for folks who are not customer experience experts. Specifically, Janet helped our leaders understand the reality of what it takes to develop and live their vision of customer centricity. The leaders definitely recognized her expertise and began to trust her experience.

“In fact, I think her real-world experience is the most valuable thing Janet brings to the table. It’s not theory. What we see from a lot of other consultancies is theories that are extracted from textbooks or proxies of what other organizations have done.  But Janet has lived it. She has developed and executed customer experience strategy. She has built the metrics and the value linkage analysis. She has done it.

“She can make that linkage analysis between the value of a good customer experience and the value to an organization. She showed us recently how the outcome metrics start to prove the value of driving a better customer experience from a shareholder perspective, from a senior leadership prospective and from an ROI perspective. This is the hard stuff.  Inherently, everybody understands that if your customers are happy, they are going to be more loyal. Actually proving those points and using data to demonstrate the actual results is really, really hard work and it’s a long-term journey. Janet has really helped us start that process.

“Along with everything she has taught us, Janet is extremely articulate. She is artful in storytelling and very compelling. We have a lot of smart people in our organization with a broad range of experience—and they often challenge her. Janet doesn’t shy away from the hard conversations, and she always respectfully engages the senior leaders in conversation by embracing dialogue and acknowledging their perspectives. Whenever she challenges the current thinking, she does so in a respectful and thoughtful way. She will have all the facts and be able to articulate why a particular viewpoint or strategy that she is recommending is the right one.

“I just can’t say enough good things about Janet. She has been a wonderful partner in everything I’ve engaged with her on. She is definitely someone I trust.”

Julie Ryan, CCXP
Director, Global Customer Connectivity
Johnson & Johnson Supply Chain

Johnson & Johnson is an American multinational Fortune 500 manufacturing company specializing in medical devices, pharmaceutical products and consumer packaged goods. Founded in 1886, Johnson & Johnson has grown to over 125,000 employees in 60 countries. Today, the award-winning company is ranked first on the CNBC iQ 100 index for deriving substantial revenue growth from protected, proprietary technology—evidenced by innovations ranging from a wearable tracker designed for people suffering from rheumatoid arthritis to apps that monitor glucose levels or anticipate the onset of seasonal allergies.