In Office/Service Process, Can You Focus on One Customer-Related Activity or Function at a Time?

Posted by Dick Lee on May 10, 2010

0 comments | 1063 reads

I’ll be uncharacteristically direct expressing my opinion.

Here’s an example of why you can’t. A new financial services client had invested lots of effort improving process one function at a time. But the whole place was running out of sync with high defect quotients they wanted us to fix…one function at a time. So we had to explain to them “one function at a time” was actually causing the problems. Here’s the gist of what we said.

O/S flows are highly interdependent. Change one and you readily create unintended consequences affecting downstream flows – plus often you can’t change what needs changing without going upstream. Manufacturing process does experience some of the same issues, but nowhere nearly as many as in the O/S.

They got that part, so we went to work. However, despite our pleadings to not “fix” anything until we’d redesigned the entire flow structure, after every meeting they insisted on going out and “taking care of” issues we’d just unearthed in cross-functional team meetings. When we’d finished and prepared our comprehensive recommendation, complete with comprehensive change management approach, the devil in me made me ask our sponsor, “How many of those ‘quick fixes’ you folks made right after meetings stuck?” She admitted, “Less than half.”

Tons of wasted time and effort, not to mention pointless burning of “change capital,” resulting from their irrepressible impatience.

Do you agree?

Republished with author's permission from original post by Dick Lee.

Dick Lee

Consultant, author and educator Dick Lee, founded High-Yield Methods in 1994. HYM helps clients build customer-centric organizations with process design, organizational design and enabling technology. Please visit Dick's Linkedin group Building the Customer-Centric Organization. For more information visit www.h-ym.com.

About Dick Lee |
Connect:

Categories:

Customer Process

1063 reads
Print
Email

0 comments »

Post new comment

Your name: *

E-mail: *

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Homepage:

Subject:

Comment: *

Input format

Filtered HTML

Allowed HTML tags: <a> <img> <hr> <table> <tr> <td> <th><ul> <ol> <li> </li><blockquote> <colspan> <rowspan><object>
Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
Images can be added to this post.

Post

Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
Images can be added to this post.

More information about formatting options

Notify me when new comments are posted

All comments

Replies to my comment

CAPTCHA

This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

What code is in the image?: *

Enter the characters shown in the image.

MarketPlace

Global Customer Experience Management (CEM) Certification Program

[May 30-31, Frankfurt; July 25-26, Hong Kong] An internationally recognized program with proven track record of success - being run for 34 times in 13 cities with attendees from 50 countries, the program is developed based on the U.S. patent-pending Branded CEM Method which aims to drive customer loyalty and brand differentiation with quantifiable business results. Limited offer: USD300 early bird discount.

Join us on May 29th in New York City. Stuart Ryder, SVP, Mobile Research Lead for Ipsos IOTX & Roxana Strohmenger, a leading Forrester analyst, will be in attendance to share best practices and new trends in mobile market research.

[June 12, Sir Francis Drake Hotel] Gregson Siu, Vice President, Ariba Business Operations, Ariba and Bob Thompson, CustomerThink, will be in attendance to share best practices, new trends and latest research to help you develop your customer experience program.

Social Networking and sCRM International Congress in Colombia

[June 25-26, Bogota] Thirteen international thought leaders will present, from different perspectives, the trends, the uses, and the magic - as well as the reality - of Social Networking and how it impacts the way customers are doing/will do business.

Driving ROI With VoC

Walker has identified multiple ways to measure ROI – there is not a one-size-fits-all solution. This paper will address each and conclude with some recommendations to help B-to-B practitioners evaluate which ROI approach will work best for their particular business need.