Customer Experience – Page 29 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

February 22, 2019

Exceptions

Exceptions are where it pays to treat everyone the same. By which of course I don’t mean “computer says no”.

Much better to have a ‘golden rule’ to fall back on that enables anyone on your team to deal with the unexpected in a way that shows you absolutely stand by the promise that you make – even if the exception in question isn’t actually a customer.

Standardisation enables brilliant exception-handling, because it takes care of the routine and so frees people up to be human.

Handling exceptions brilliantly, as a human being, creates fans.

February 21, 2019

Standardisation

‘Standardisation’ often results in every customer being treated the same – whether they like it or not.

To my mind, a better way of looking at standardisation is that it is about treating the same kind of customer in the same kind of way – and of course, in a way that delivers on the promise you’ve made to them before they bought..

So if, for example, you have 4 different services, you could design 4 delivery processes. They may have a lot of activities in common, but by designing a process for each service, you’re making sure the process is easier for everyone to follow – neither you nor your customer is being made to do unnecessary work.

It may even be the case that different people on your team prefer delivering one kind of service to another, so splitting them means you can always have the best person for the job.

Of course there will always be exceptions, so room has to be left for these to be handled in a way that still delivers on the promise, but they should really be exceptions.

The key to all of this, is to start from the customer’s shoes.

The interesting thing is that, in my experience, getting it right from the customer’s perspective, actually makes things much easier and more profitable to run.

February 20, 2019

Not Applicable

If you have a checklist with items that can be ‘not applicable’, you haven’t got a checklist, you’ve got at least 2 checklists, and you’re asking for trouble.

Including every possible option doesn’t make executing the process easier.

February 19, 2019

The spaces in between

No matter how beautiful the fabrics, or how exquisitely they are cut, they don’t become the end product until they’ve been joined together by a unifying framework.

In this case, its one with considerable give in it.

February 15, 2019

Metaphor

“To learn easily is naturally pleasant to all people, and words signify something, so whatever words create knowledge in us are the pleasantest. Metaphor most brings about learning.” ~Aristotle

When Blue Rocket Accounting and I started working together, they had a different, very traditional name, based on the surnames of the founding partners. Julie, the new owner, was fascinated by the NASA space programmes, and had already adopted some graphics reflecting that into the branding for the business.

As a result, when we put together the Promise of Value for the business, a powerful metaphor emerged: “we are Houston to your space mission.”

We ran with this metaphor, packaging services up to suit different types of space mission – “Blast Off”, “Maintain Orbit”, “Expand Orbit”, “Reach for the Stars”.

Then we took it further, defining Roles inside the business that are based on key Roles in Mission Control.

So for example, Blue Rocket has a ‘Capsule Communicator’, the primary communication channel for each client mission. Where most accountants would have a ‘Client Account Manager’, Blue Rocket has a ‘Flight Dynamics Officer’ whose job it is to give the client the information they need, when they need it, to keep them on the trajectory they’ve chosen.

This is carried through into the names of key processes: “Deliver Blast-Off”, “Deliver Maintain Orbit”, and so on.

This has proven to be extremely powerful in driving growth.

Firstly, prospective clients find it very easy to grasp exactly what Blue Rocket can do for them, and which package they need, so it makes it easy for them to buy. It’s not for everyone of course, some potential clients find the whole thing too frivolous, but they aren’t the companies Blue Rocket wants to work with, so that’s OK for everyone.

Secondly, its hard to forget why you do what you do when your job title is ‘Flight Dynamics Officer’ or ‘Capsule Communicator’ or ‘Voice of Mission Control’. You’re literally playing out the company’s promise to customers.

So, what would your metaphor be?

February 12, 2019

Board games

If your business was a board game? What would it look like? What should it look like?

How do your prospects and customers move through the game?

What routes can they take?

What obstacles do they encounter?

Where are the pitfalls?

Who is there to help them?

What is the prize?

Who wins?

February 11, 2019

Resource Scarcity

When a resource is expensive, it seems sensible to use it as efficiently as possible. So we batch jobs up for it, making them wait, so the expensive, and therefore scarce resource can be used to the max.

The problem with this approach is that it distorts the process, optimising a single step at the expense of the rest of it.

This distortion often persists long after the resource in question is no longer scarce. So you get GP and hospital waiting rooms; jobcentres and jury rooms, full of people in forced idleness, just so that the ‘scarce resource’ is maximally productive.

What if we designed our processes around the most critically affected role instead?

Things would look very different, and would be much more efficent overall – although the ‘scarce resource’ might feel a little less important.

February 6, 2019

Elaboration

Sam at Lewisham Local asked me to elaborate on what I mean by this:

‘scaling successfully is about creating an ecosystem where others can lead’

Here goes…

When you first start a small business you are in control. You make all the promises. You keep them. You are the leader of your own business.

When you can no longer keep up with demand yourself, you add more people. At first, this works, because you are offloading jobs that are easily defined (which could also be outsourced) such as bookkeeping, accounting, diary management, or you are handing over whole areas of responsibility such as sales for example, to another person and simply letting them get on with it.

Beyond a certain size though – perhaps around 5 -7 people – this approach starts to break down. You’ve run out of ‘easy to define’ jobs to offload, and the people you’ve handed responsibility to turn out to have completely different ideas about the promises you are making and how to keep them. They need watching, and controlling.

You are still the only leader, and you spend your time monitoring what other people are doing instead of working on your business. So you get stuck at this scale. You may even decide to scale back at this point, because going further just seems too hard.

What you really want is people who don’t need to be told, who can take responsibility for delivering on behalf of the business, each one of them a leader for the business.

But in order to do this, your people need an ecosystem that supports them.

For me this ecosystem looks like this:

It gives absolute clarity on who the business serves and what the business promises to do for them.
It nails down the values and behaviours that drive ‘the way we do things’ round here, setting expectations for behaviour for everyone in and around the business.
It is structured around processes, not functions, and certainly not management hierarchy. Processes start and end at the boundary of the organisation – they go from end-to-end, following the lifecycle of a prospect through to client and beyond. In this way the ecosystem stays focused on the people it serves. Everything that goes on inside the ecosystem is a side-effect of attracting and serving clients.
Processes provide clear direction on what needs to be done when, both to make the right promises to the right people, and to deliver on those promises – without specifying in excruciating detail how to do those things (although they may reference a library of techniques or ‘how-to’s that beginners may find useful).
Processes set out the usual run of events, without enumerating every possible scenario. This means that technical expertise still resides in the individual, who can exercise their professional judgement to handle exceptions, based on their own knowledge and experience, plus the values and behaviours expected of them.
It is based on roles, not individuals. Roles have clear responsibilities to clients. Roles run processes and each process is the exclusive responsiblility of one role. In effect every role-player leads their own processes. Roles may participate in processes they are not responsible for.
It ensures that everything is visible to everyone, and that all the resources needed to perform a role are available as and when they are needed.
Finally, it includes feedback mechanisms, so that it can improve and evolve. This includes rewards, which to be effective, should fairly reflect individual contributions.

In this ecosystem individuals can play more than one role, and the same role can be performed by many individuals. This is how you scale – you simply add more individuals in the roles you need.

Ideally, an individual runs an entire end-to-end process – effectively becoming a mini-business on their own, a bit like a franchise, but internal. This is how you can scale and transform to an employee-owned, employee-run business.

To begin with, you as the original leader will want to monitor and action all feedback, but roles should see everything too. Their responsibilities include improving the ecosystem based on this feedback.

Over time, as you become more confident that your people are running the business as it should be, you can let them get on with it – they will lead the business instead of you.

It takes a while to build an ecosystem like this, but once you have it, scaling becomes much easier.

That was a long elaboration – thank you for reading it.

Thank you Sam for asking it.

February 4, 2019

Erosion and deposition

This is how trust gets eroded. Promises made, then broken.

Drip by drip.

Until we learn to ignore the promises and put up with whatever we get.

But it’s also how trust is created. Promises made, and kept.

Every time, drip by drip.

Until we learn to expect the best, and trust that we will get it.

Start small if you have to, but mean it.

February 1, 2019

Off the peg or bespoke?

We tend to think of bespoke and off the peg as very much an either/or option. Not just in clothes.

It’s easy to find standard legal agreements on the internet that you can download for a few pounds, and even easier to find a lawyer who will answer your question about cost with a sharp intake of breath and “well, it depends – every case is different you see”.

We professionals can get hung up on the ‘case by case basis’ that defines us as professional and look on any level of standardisation with disdain.

I believe there are needs for the ‘tailored off the peg’ that are currently unmet, that if embraced would benefit both buyer and seller.

For example, I could buy a standard franchise agreement based on given parameters, then review it with a quaified lawyer to ensure it is up to date and covers all my specific needs. I could even buy an annual review service to make sure it stays up to date.

This isn’t just more affordable for me, its also easier for the professional to deliver, without becoming mechanical or boring for the lawyer.

Between ‘high-touch’ bespoke and ‘no-touch’ off-the-peg, there is up to date experience, built on a tried and tested standard – ‘the best touch’, if we’re open to looking for it.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Customer Experience