Are Process and Service Mutually Exclusive

Gwynne Young
Managing Editor, CustomerThink
Member

Posted 09-May-2006 02:13 PM
Guru Dick Lee puts out a theory in the May 15 Advisor newsletter that good process leads to bad service in a non-manufacturing environment. Read full article here: Can Good Process Support Bad Service?

He gives as one example airline ground service, where the process is in place and measurable but makes for lousy service when support people won't tell you when flights are really departing or what's causing delays. So you sit there fuming, missing your meeting or your connection.

Do you agree with Lee? Is it possible to have a good, measurable process and good service?

Malcolm Wicks
Member

Posted 15-May-2006 10:48 AM
Of course it's possible to have a good measurable process and good service. Dick quoted Amazon as an example in his piece. The issue is not the fact that there is a process. (After all every company has to have them.) The issue is how they are written and implemented. In my experience many service problems accur because staff don't follow an existing process. Too much "empowerment" can be a bad thing too.

MJ
Member

Posted 15-May-2006 10:52 PM
I fully agree with Lee—there is a big difference between factory type processes and service processes. And empowering employees make a huge difference, not only to customers but also to process execution. Some processes cannot be defined into an exact science—there are variations, depending on circumstances and to document every permutation, not to say to measure it, would be madness! For these processes I apply the 80-20 when it comes to documenting. Empowered and skilled staff deal with exceptions and the process need to show what CONTROLS are applied to ensure exceptions are managed. But these controls are best left in the hands of EMPOWERED staff to exercise. Care is taken on WHAT is measured—yes, it can be measured! For instance, it is no good to measure call centre staff on the number of calls handled per hour or per day if what you really want is for them to apply a first level diagnostic and to see how many customer problems can be solved immediately without being passed on to 2nd level support.

Gwynne Young
Managing Editor, CustomerThink
Member

Posted 16-May-2006 09:55 AM
Malcolm,

I think you make a great point about employees being "too" empowered. Years ago, I answered phones for a newspaper, fielding complaints about the paper not showing up and putting through vacation stops.

We were all instructed to forward any call with an irate customer to our supervisor. He was a really easy-going guy and had no trouble picking up the phone when we asked. There were no repercussions. (And we were a Union shop, so it was tough to fire us.) Still, you wouldn't believe how many of my colleagues hung up on customers, rather than let our supervisor know.

Why would they do that? My belief is that people instinctively take everything personally. Someone yelled in their ear, and they yelled back. And click. Next customer.

A good training program would have helped immensely, but the newspaper was never going to spend the money.

Malcolm Wicks
Member

Posted 16-May-2006 03:33 PM
Gwynne,

An interesting example of what I'm sure happens in lots of places. In my experience one of the best ways to avoid the situation that you described is to tell the people taking the calls what good looks like and then empowering them to implement good. For example: "Good is not losing your temper with a customer and passing all complaints that you can't deal with to a supervisor. We want to retain any complaining customer and you determine how best to do that without giving away more than 2 free newspapers."

I've implemented this type of model of "empowerment" in several companies and guess what, the level/severity of complaints go down and so does the costs of problem resolution and lost customers.

So maybe what we are talking about is directed empowerment as apposed to abdicated empowerment.

Malcolm

Graham Hill
Guru
Member

Posted 17-May-2006 01:37 AM
Gwynne

Dick's question "Can Good Process Support Bad Service?" is obviously a rhetorical one. It is self-evident that the two are not causally related and that good processes can co-exist with awful service e.g., well, take your pick of banking, telecoms, utilities, etc, just as poor or even no process can co-exist with excellent service, e.g. the local bakery where I buy my daily bread.

But Dick's assertion that process predictability & measurement is reductio ad absurdum somehow responsible for lousy service is simply not true. As in many things in life, service requests tend to follow a Pareto or Power Law distribution; <20% of requests account for >80% of activity. These are the requests where appropriate processes, measures & targets are most useful.

Where possible, standard processes with appropriate measures & targets should be put into place for these common requests. Processes should be developed around how the requests are most effectively fulfilled to the company and to the customers satisfaction. Sometimes this takes a bit of balancing to get it right. As Dick's examples show, companies who tip the balance too far in their own favour often end up with legions of unhappy customers (or ex-customers). Common exceptions to these processes should be also be identified and alternative processes or working procedures developed where appropriate. This provides a framework within which to handle 95% of common requests. The framework shouldn't be a rigid process straght-jacket, but rather a flexible guide for motivated, trained, empowered staff to progress requests to a successful outcome. The long tail of rare and new requests, should be handled through the same staff using their common-sense, by looking for similar types of requests in the framework, or by asking others for help.

Research identifies three factors that are required for successful service contacts: An equitable result for the customer, an appropriate process which provides it, and appropriate customer handling; customers are human and respond emotionally to many circumstances, particularly where something has gone wrong and they are seeking help.

Standard processes operated within a flexible framework provide a large part of service success. Motivated, trained, empowered staff provide much of the rest. And appropriate measures & targets are part and parcel of running any service business.

Too much service today is lousy. The root cause of much of this is not predictable & measurable processes, but rather companies who tip the service balance too much in their own favour at the expense of customers. That's a management failure rather than a process failure.

Graham Hill
Independent CRM Consultant

elizz
Member

Posted 22-May-2006 12:33 PM
I do agree that a company can have good,measurable process and good service if there is the appropriate balance between the two. I work in a Financial Institution with Branches experiencing different levels of customer satisfaction which seemed to be linked and lack of standardised customer friendly processes for common tasks. How to achieve the approriate balance and how to link customer service policy to customer service and customer experience are some of the challenging issues which may add some clarity.

Alan Piesse
Member
Picture of Alan Piesse

Posted 31-May-2006 09:28 AM
I've recently set up a trial contacting customers about specific financial needs. The processes for dealing with these needs are in place. Escalation procedures, literature, FAQs etc.

We've learnt that no matter how well you plan you can never cover all the bases. Customers are seemingly infinitely variable.

A process we've added is that we ask the agents to detail any customer request/issue in a free form manner and then we develop new processes on the back of these.

For instance we had set up the process for the customer to opt into an annual review. Customers then started to tell us that a more frequent review was required. The process was then changed to allow this. Seems simple but it has a big impact when you go from 1 customer contact per year to 4. All sorts of capacity and cost issues arise and a big shift away from selling.

In order to deliver this we've had to instill in the service teams a service culture. Sounds odd but no matter how well written instructions and processes are they always find themselves subject to different interpretations. Our biggest mistake was to "issue instructions" which led to poor customer service. Much greater success has been gained by consistent messages about treating the customer fairly, owning the problem, "how would you like to be treated" etc.

After a while we found that the agents were defining and developing processes for us to meet customer needs. Sounds like anarchy but they understood what we were trying to do and what the customer was saying and were suggesting how we could go about solving these issues.

Alan Piesse

Graham Hill
Guru
Member

Posted 31-May-2006 11:49 PM
Alan

Hmman factors are critical in turning a dull process-oriented organisation into a high performance work system.

Just implementing customer-oriented business processes and perhaps even reorganising around them, isn't enough to drive success in customer-facing business. The fundamental values that drive the whole organisation's attutudes, behaviour and culture also need to be aligned.

The values required are those often described as a 'high-performance work system' and include:

1. Clarity of Direction, so that staff and suppliers (and even customers) know where the company is going and why
2. Customer Focus, so that everyone knows that the customer is Job No 1
3. Enriched, Enlarged Jobs, so that staff do meaningful, value-adding work
4. Team Empowerment, so that teams are able to manage their own work to completion
5. Open Information Access, so that staff have access to the right information to manage their own work
6. Quality Assurance, so that teams and staff are responsible for the quality of their own work
This isn't a complete list but I'm sure you get the idea.

Moving from the values that are most often associated with, for example, a product-orientation, towards these values requires an organisation to evolve through a number of well-defined steps. This can be slow and difficult work which many managers do not have the patience to see through to completion.

Graham Hill
Independent Management Consultant