December 5, 2011

3 Steps To BE EaSY

Slim Down Your Middle
Performance Mis-Management
Go Fish
Most organizations seem to be on the hunt to “exceed customer expectations” and provide remarkable customer service.

If you had the energy and capacity to do only one thing to advance toward this goal it would be, in my view, “TO MAKE IT EASY FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS TO ENGAGE WITH YOU”.

Sounds reasonable and straightforward doesn’t it?

The problem is it rarely happens. Organizations put people through hoops and inconvenience just to have the “pleasure” of doing business with them.

Ever stood in a lineup for 20 minutes before being served? Waited 30 minutes on the phone before a Call Center Rep answered your call? Tried to navigate through a Voice Response System to get to the right person? Had to repeat your story to 4 different people after being transferred among
several departments?

We’ve all been there. When this happens to us it is impossible for any business to claim they care about wanting to serve us well.

How does it happen? Well, it boils down to being an Operations issue. It’s related to systems and processes. And it’s also about costs.

The common theme, however, is that the company designs it’s Operations to suit ITSELF rather than serve the customer in an easy way. “Cost efficient systems and processes” drive what the customer transaction looks like.

If you REALLY want to reverse this and take a giant step to BE EaSY, follow these 3 Steps:

1. Involve the customer in process design. Ask a panel of your Fans if the process is easy. Customer-driven re-engineering, rather than having internal process management experts lead the way, would produce huge benefits. Also as a major side benefit, your customers will appreciate
that you invited them in to help you. They will tell others of your “openness”.

2. “De-complexify” your processes. Make them simple. Remove steps. Minimize the number of times the customer is required to do something.

3. Never pass a customer around. Take responsibility for the customer and YOU deal with your internal world to sort it out for them. YOU deal with your inefficient processes. Don’t force your customer to do it.

These steps won’t make you perfect overnight but they will put you on the right path.

Cheers,
Roy


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Posted 12.5.11 at 04:50 am by Roy Osing | Read Comments (0) | Leave a Comment