Customer Experience – Page 20 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

October 8, 2020

I’d lose control

The only way to scale a business that is built around you is to embed the ‘you’ into the way the business works, so that everything about it reminds your prospects and clients of you, even when you are not in the room.

That means enabling and empowering other people to do what you do, as well as or better than you do it. That isn’t losing control, it’s just putting the control in a different place – into the fabric of the business, instead of one or more people’s heads.

Perhaps what’s really behind the worry of ‘losing control’ is the fear of becoming less important to the business. After all, if it can get on perfectly well without you, where does that leave you, the founder, the originator of the vision? The irony is of course, that the more you dig your actual self into the business, the less able it will be to survive without you. All too often, an amazing little business fizzles out with the life of its founder. To my mind, it’s almost criminal to let that happen.

Done well, composing your Customer Experience Score puts you right where you belong – embedded into the heart and soul of the business, without actually having to be present day to day. It’s not just your prospects and clients that will be reminded of you every time they interact with your business, your people will be reminded too. Even those who haven’t joined yet.

Dale Carnegie has been dead a long while, but the business he founded carries on as world-wide empire, with his vision and philosophy firmly ensconced at its heart.

Isn’t that something worth giving up hands-on control for?

September 28, 2020

Exhausted

I spent the weekend looking for a cooker hood. I don’t like them, I’ve never had one, and I’d rather not have one now. But I am obliged to put one in my new kitchen, so have one I must.

Finally, after hours of searching online, I find one I can live with. It’s available all over the internet, under different brand names and SKU codes, from at least a dozen retailers, some of whom are clearly using the same database and software to present their goods. Every one of them is the same price. Competition here is clearly an illusion.

But what is really infuriating is that not one of those dozen retailers sells the associated carbon filter I will need to make the thing actually work. Nor do they give the manufacturer’s model number that would enable me to find the correct filter elsewhere.

More hours of detective work follow, to track down the ‘manufacturer’ (actually just a ‘brand’) and therefore find the model number I need to find a filter that will fit. Spares sites tend to be independent, and restrict what they ‘stock’.

Finally, I manage it, and get both things safely ordered. All in all, it’s cost me a day and a half to buy a simple cooker hood and carbon filter online.

But what else should I expect, when this is how most companies see ‘the buying process’?

High streets are struggling, we are told. IMHO , all they need to do is offer a truly helpful, rather than a merely ‘convenient’ service, even if only as a front end for an internet purchase – imagine Argos with expert human beings and the best possible product database.

After all, it’s the front end that really matters.

September 16, 2020

Software error

It turns out that yesterday’s AWOL veg box wasn’t down to a new driver, but to a problem with the navigation software.

The driver did a great job of sorting things out. He bought a new phone, double-checked his route and corrected the mistakes. He took responsibility and did what needed to be done to really keep us happy.

Meanwhile head office was offering refunds.

Technology is brilliant, but you need a systematic way of identifying when it’s broken, as quickly as possible. Analogue visual indicators work well for this e.g.the address label on the box, a line marked on a bottle that used every day.

You also need a fall-back manual process for when the software breaks. That way, things may take a little longer, but nobody is taken by surprise, and nobody is let down. And you don’t have to compensate unnecessarily.

Do you check your phones are working every morning? Do you have backup phones? Do you keep an up-to-date back-up (maybe even hard copy) of your contacts? Do you have a process for learning from mistakes and accidents?

I’d be surprised if you do.

September 15, 2020

New driver

My veg box supplier has been growing really fast. I’m not suprised, it’s a great scheme.

Today’s veg box has gone AWOL. It’s been delivered to someone else by mistake.

I’d bet an artichoke that there’s a new driver.

And no Customer Experience Score.

September 14, 2020

Interference

Last Friday, the materials for our new roof were delivered. Tiles, ridge tiles, clips, battens, everything the roofers would need to start the job the following day.

Except, I spotted, the membrane that goes between joists and tiles. Without that the job couldn’t even start. To be honest, we’re relaxed about the schedule, but I knew our building company prides itself on being ahead, rather than behind, and our choice of tiles had taken time to source, so they were only just ‘on track’.

I could see the delivery driver had a pallet-load of it on his truck, so I asked the question, just in case. It wasn’t on his delivery sheet, so he called the office. They didn’t have it in the order either.

“Well I’ve got a pallet load here, so I’ll take a roll off and we can sort out the order with our client back in the office. That saves me coming back later if it is missing.”

When I told our project manager, she said that’s why they always use that building supply company, because they focus first on foremost on taking care of their clients and end-users, rather than sticking rigidly to procedure.

I’d interfered in the process wrongly, as it happened. The membrane wasn’t missing. When the roofers turned up next day, they brought a big roll of it with them, and put it back in their van once they saw it wasn’t needed.

Obviously what was really missing was a clear understanding of who’s responsible for what, apart from inside the project manager’s head. Does it always work this way? Or does that depend on the roofer? If everyone (including the client?) knows it’s always the supplier’s job to supply everything, this sort of mix-up wouldn’t happen.

What could remedy that? A Customer Experience Score.

Not a procedures manual to consult every five minutes and follow slavishly. Rather, a high-level picture of ‘what happens when’ that can be quickly and easily learnt by each new person or business that comes on board. Something that says “This is how we do things, so if you join us, you need to understand this too”. That way everyone is empowered to make sure things happen as they should, even if they don’t actually work for you.

In this case the mix-up happened the right way round. The roofers finished at 10pm on Sunday, having worked their socks off for two days. Our build is back on schedule, and I’m happy to recommend our building company to anyone.

But I’m also going to suggest a little composition.

August 20, 2020

One size fits no-one

Standardisation is useful. Standard shoe and clothing sizes enabled manufacture at scale, which in turn meant that more people could afford decent clothes and shoes than ever before. Standard sizes are worked out by taking averages of the actual population.

Standardised clothing works for two reasons. First because sizes are based on at most two or three dimensions. This means that any given individual is more likely to fall within an average range for a given size. There will be exceptions (I can never find gloves to fit), but they will be rare. The other reason is that clothes are soft, they have give. People can easily adjust the standard to suit themselves. You can belt a baggy shirt, or wear extra socks inside too-big shoes. A slightly too-tight dress will stretch a little. You can at least be comfortable, if not always elegant.

Averaging over multiple dimensions, especially for something rigid, like a building, an office, or a cockpit is far less successful – even dangerous. Nobody fits this kind of average, so everyone becomes uncomfortable and inefficient.

The same goes for business processes. No two businesses do things in quite the same way – not even when they are doing the same job. So forcing your way of doing things into a generic off-the-shelf pattern squeezes out diffentiation, turning you into a commodity. It also makes the people running the process both uncomfortable and inefficient.

Those are the last things you or your customers want.

The alternative isn’t to tailor everything from scratch every time.

If you’ve been in business for a few years, you will have your own set of patterns for ‘the way we do things round here’.

Identify them, create templates from them. Then use them to build processes that are fully adjustable by the people who will actually use them.

Adjustable gives far better results than the average.

August 12, 2020

As-is, Should-be

Mozart didn’t write down his music ‘as-is’ before writing it again as ‘should-be’.

Of course not.

Like all composers, Mozart started with what he wanted the audience to hear, the ‘should-be’, translating as closely as he could what he had in his head into musical notes on paper.

I doubt if his first result was the only one.

Once you’ve got your Customer Experience Score written down, it doesn’t matter that it started as ‘should be’. The job now is to make it your ‘as-is’, then to continually evolve it in line with the best ‘should-be’ you and your people can imagine.

August 10, 2020

Automate Drudgery

I’m a firm believer in automating drudgery – boring, repetitive unsatisfying work, often physically hard, and often involving tasks that we humans really aren’t that good at.

So I welcome software that automates sending emails, or makes it easier to book people onto a job, or does my bank reconciliation for me.

But every time we automate, we insert a veil beween us and the people we serve, making it easier to forget why we are doing the work – to help another human being flourish. As layers build, it becomes all too easy to slip into thinking about people as mere statistics, rather than the flesh and blood individuals they are.

The way to counteract this is to consciously use the energy and attention released by automation to make a deeper connection with the person on the other side.

For the people who spend their lives behind whole walls of automation and disconnection, this will feel ‘wasteful’. It isn’t.

It’s an investment that will pay off handsomely, for both sides.

July 17, 2020

Flipping

This week, the problem with my broadband connection was finally sorted. After 4 months.

On the first visit the engineer ran some tests and did something with the connection at the bottom of the pole. He also checked the socket in my house and gave our arrangement the thumbs up. The speed went up again, but the fix only lasted a day. Whenever anyone called on the landline, it went down again.

On the second visit a new engineer ran some tests and did something else with the connection at the bottom of the pole. He also replaced the socket in my house with a new one. He explained that the reason why the fix didn’t last was because the system is set up to reduce the speed to keep the connection stable. Fair enough. The speed went up again, but only lasted a day. Whenever anyone called on the landline, it went down again.

On the third visit another engineer tinkered with the connection at the bottom of the pole. He ran some more tests, which determined that the fault was somewhere between the top of the telegraph pole and the outside of my house. Nothing changed. Terrible speed, and the line kept dropping.

On the fourth visit a different engineer tested the line from my end, inside the house. He then went to the cabinet half a mile away and tested the line from there. He identified that the fault was somewhere between the top of the telegraph pole and the outside of my house. So he looked for a likely location, got his ladder out and looked at the box that connects the line to the outside of my house, near the roof.

Bingo! The box was full of water. He changed the box, replaced the connectors, and everything was fine. And stayed fine.

I am delighted of course, and have nothing to complain of regarding any of the individuals involved either from my provider or from Openreach.

But I can’t help thinking that the process could be better.

I get that in a network, you have to be systematic in your search for a fault. I’ve done it myself.

Usually, you test the connection at one end, then the other, starting with the extremes. In this case, the exchange, and my socket. Then you repeat the test, working inwards through pairs of connecting nodes until you’ve narrowed down the location of the fault to a single length of wire.

But I wonder if the application of experience could shorten the process?

Maybe the answer would be to start with the shortest length of wire – between my socket and the connection at the top of my house – and work outwards from there? After all these are the parts most exposed to the elements, and most likely to fail.

It would be just as systematic and in the worst case take no longer than working from the outside in. But it could well be better for the customer as well as being quicker and cheaper for Openreach.

Or perhaps it would be even quicker and cheaper just to replace that external box every time, because it’s the weakest point in the chain and also the most accessible? That way you’re renewing the network as you go, for pence.

I don’t know. I’m not a telephone engineer. Just a process geek, who happens to be a customer.

July 16, 2020

My kind of self-checkout

This is where I was when I should have been writing yesterday’s blog. Picking up my shopping. Olive oil, almonds and honey from Portugal, chocolate from Trinidad via Cornwall, Coffee and sugar from Colombia, sea salt from Brittany.

There was plenty more on offer – olives, tapenades, lupini beans, pinto beans and more. All more or less direct from small producers, transported under sail.

I even got to meet 50% of the supply chain: Gareth from Raybel Charters through whom I ordered, and Guillaume who captains the ship.

That’s my kind of self-checkout.

PS If you’re in Faversham or Whitstable over the next couple of days, look out for the Thames barge Dawn the ‘van’ for onward local deliveries

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

Category: Customer Experience