Be Different or be dead

December 6, 2011

3 simple ways to make it incredibly easy to serve your customers

Source: Pexels

3 simple ways to make it incredibly easy to serve your customers.

Most organizations are 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…

“MAKE IT EASY FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS TO ENGAGE WITH YOU”.

Sounds reasonable and straightforward doesn’t it?

The problem is it doesn’t always happen. Organizations often put their customers through hoops and inconvenience when they try and serve them.

— Ever stood in a lineup for 40 minutes before being served?
— Waited 60 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 to talk to?
— Had to repeat your story to 4 different people after being transferred among several departments?

We’ve all been there.

When these things happen, it is impossible for any business to claim they care about wanting to serve us well, let alone exceed our expectations.

What is the root cause for this dysfunction? It boils down to operations planning — systems and processes.

And it’s also about trying to control costs.

The organization designs it’s operations to suit itself in a cost efficient way 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 take a giant step to BE EaSY follow these 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 and willingness to let go of some control.

2. Simplify your business processes

Eliminate steps. Reduce the amount of work performed in each step. Minimize the number of times the customer is required to do something. Take the burden off the customer and place it on your organization.

3. Never pass a customer around

This is probably the greatest annoyance to any customer.

“Sorry, but this isn’t my area; I will transfer you to sales and they will help you.” NO! The employee with the customer should stay with the customer until they are satisfied. They should own the issue and work it through to a satisfactory ending for the customer.

4. Say ‘yes’

Create a service culture to ’say yes’ to customers. Do whatever you can to satisfy their needs and wants. Don’t let your internal rules and policies get in the way. Bend them or break them if they are preventing you from saying ‘yes’ to your most precious assets.

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

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 12.6.11 at 07:42 am by Roy Osing
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December 1, 2011

Middle management should do these 6 simple things to be great at execution

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Middle management should do these 6 simple things to be great at execution.

Good executers have few people in their organization who run interference. Their organizations are extremely flat with only a few layers of management separating leadership from the frontline.

Successful companies don’t impede their frontline from above with thick layers of middle management folks who seem to do nothing than delegate, administer, co-ordinate and other low value activities.

They don’t bulge in the middle.

Middle management can choke the folks in the trenches.

They can get in the way of achieving results expected by the organization’s business plan.

Take a look at the number of layers in your organization between the leader and the frontline. How many do you have?
If there are more than two layers, you likely are ‘bulging in the middle’ with excess managers who are getting in the way of effective execution.

I suggest you think long and hard about eliminating one or two layers and redefining the roles of the managers you have left.

Hold middle managers accountable for these 6 things if you want them to contribute to executing your business plan, not slow it down.

1. Bashing barriers
Managers in the middle should be bashing barriers for your execution squad of frontline people.
Removing the things that prevent them from moving forward to execute the strategic intent of your organization should be the role you recruit managers to satisfy.

2. Killing dumb rules
Managers in the middle should be seeking out and eliminating the rules and policies that get in the way of providing superlative customer service. Their primary role here is to ‘cleanse the internal environment’ of things that don’t make sense to customers and promote a customer engagement experience that fosters happiness and customer loyalty.

3. Translating leadership’s direction
Managers in the middle must be proficient at translating leadership’s direction into what executing the strategy means to the day-to-day job of every employee.
If employees don’t know exactly what the strategy means to their specific job, execution falters, synergy goes missing and progress to strategic goals stops.

4. Cutting the CRAP
Managers in the middle must be looking for ways to simplify how the frontline does their job. Lubricating business processes is essential to more effective execution, as is removing all activities that don’t directly contribute to strategic goals — CRAP.
And leadership must remove or reallocate managers involved in ‘yesterday’s relevance’ for they add no strategic value to the organization.

5. Allocating scarce resources
Managers in the middle must ensure that the critical few priorities are fed with the right number and quality of people to deliver expected outcomes.
They must ensure that the focus is one what must be done and not on what could be done. The ‘art of the possible’ must be avoided in the face of limited resources.

6. Doing, not delegating stuff
Managers in the middle must get used to doing more themselves rather than serving as a conduit that passes on directives given out by their bosses.
One of the biggest issues I’ve seen relating to middle management effectiveness is the ‘pass on’ function they seem to want to perform. Rather than pitching in and doing the hard work, they pass it on to others without adding any personal value to the expected outcome and thereby adding to the bulge in the middle.

If you’re in the middle and you’re not serving the frontline to better execute, you’re not contributing

As mentioned above, activity that adds little value to carrying out the strategy of an organization is CRAP, and it needs to be cut out; unnecessary layers of management fits the CRAP definition and should be cut out as well.

Eliminate non-execution layers and your frontline will love you for it.

For your to-do list today study your organization chart. How can you slice a layer out?

Start the boot camp diet process now!

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 12.1.11 at 09:25 am by Roy Osing
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November 24, 2011

Why chasing tactics can prevent progress to your business plan goals

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Why chasing tactics can prevent progress to your business plan goals.

Chasing stuff is fun. It’s non-threatening. It provides here-and-now gratification. It’s organizational comfort food

Go fish. Pick a card. Follow the instructions. Where does it lead? Who knows until you pick another card.

Many organizations function like this. Tactics rule. Immediate opportunities dominate how time is consumed.

Performance is often measured by how many things a person has on the go; the length of their to-do list.

Tactical driven activity, unfortunately, sometimes produces little value because it is often not consistent with the business plan of the organization

And activity with little or no connection to its strategic intent consumes copious amounts of time and energy.

You never know how much progress you’re making.

Get your strategic thinking straight before you give chase to action.

Be sure you are focusing on what is absolutely necessary to do in order to deliver your strategy.

If you can’t define precisely how your actions contribute to the strategy STOP!

Pick a card that puts you on the right path and follow it.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 11.24.11 at 10:28 am by Roy Osing
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November 21, 2011

Why career success can’t be achieved by doing one thing

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Why career success can’t be achieved by doing one thing.

Everyone is looking for the one thing that will vault them, or their business, to success and riches.

What is the one thing that, if you knock myself out on, will propel you to success?

Is their one single thing you can do to have an amazing career plan?

The harsh reality is that you can’t count on one thing to succeed either personally or in business.

Success is a journey.

— Made of single wins;
— Incremental gains;
— Nano-inches of progress;
— Passion;
— Tenacity;
— And pain, a high threshold for it.

The intellectual master plan rarely produces a star.

Want to win? Set your sights on what you want to be. Get going. Learn from your actions. Keep going.

Success comes from doing lots of stuff not pontificating on theoretical possibilities

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 11.21.11 at 10:19 am by Roy Osing
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