Service Recovery Window

For organisations providing a service to customers (ie. most organisations), there will be times when the service delivery doesn’t match the customer’s expectations. This occurs when the customer’s expectations are not clearly understood or managed.

Organisations that are specifically service-based, differ from those that manufacture products. In both instances, there is a requirement that needs to be satisfied. However, while we can measure when a product is delivered, or if it meets a design criteria, we often struggle to quantify if a service is satisfactorily delivered. In many instances, we don’t even try; we don’t know how many repeat customers we have or how many went elsewhere and never return after experiencing our service.

In delivering a service to your customers, do you ask if they are satisfied? Do you do this as a matter of course? Is it part of your standard procedure? If you don’t, how would you do this? What opportunities do you have to solicit their feedback?

The answers to these questions will depend in part on the actual service you are providing. The duration of the interaction you have with your customer will impact on your capacity to seek their feedback. For example, how much time do you spend with a customer in identifying their needs and then fulfilling them? After you have delivered your service, how long does your interaction with the customer last? Do they have the opportunity to assess the service and provide feedback before you break contact with them? Do you conduct any additional follow up with them?

For example, as customers, we can easily identify when a meal is not to our expectation. We can readily identify our concerns to the restaurant staff. If the fuel economy on our car is excessive following a routine service, do we identify this to our mechanic? Do we even know? If we are a tour operator, the perception of customers at the beginning of their holiday may well be different than at the end of their holiday. How do we capture that? As customers, when do we decide that a service is not adequate? It may be almost immediately, or it may be some days or even weeks later.

As a provider of services, we need to identify that our customers may not be in a position to assess our service delivery for some time. When our customer’s expectations are not met, what do we need to do to recover this failure? What strategies do we have in place for effective service recovery? Do we provide a service guarantee? Is it effective?

The first rule of service quality is to do it right the first time. But we need to remain receptive to feedback and the opportunities to solicit additional feedback even after the financial transaction is completed. And when things do go wrong we need to act quickly to fix them and be in a position to provide solutions. We need to remain aware that the opportunity to fix issues has a very finite window – the service recovery window. Our capacity to provide solutions where and when they are identified is incredibly important for maintaining our customer relationships. How we manage service failures and our response, will directly impact our future business and our bottom line.

The key to minimising service failures is in having a clear understanding of our customer’s (every changing) expectations. If we are actively seeking to continuously improve our service delivery, then the number of potentially dissatisfied customers should be few. At the same time, this doesn’t mean that we can perceive all possible points of failure and just hoping that things won’t go wrong. Rather it is necessary to have a plan of what actions we will take when service failures do occur.

To discuss customer service strategies, service recovery or placing the customer at the centre of your business, go to our contact page.

Stephen Nicholson
Principal Consultant

Opinion by Richard Branson

“In business, there’s no such thing as a perfect 10”

In this article, Richard Branson talks about his success and why it’s important to “look at your business or brand from the outside in”.

There’s always room for improvement in product and service offerings. By placing ourselves in our customer’s shoes, we can understand their experience and optimise our product delivery from their point of view; leading to an improved outcome for our customers.

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/lifestyle/opinion-in-business-theres-no-such-thing-as-a-perfect-10/

Advanced BPM Training

Recently I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the BP Group Certified Process Process Professional program in Brisbane. For me, this was the opportunity to follow up the three day Business Process Management Training I had previously attended in Melbourne.

As expected, there were a great group of attendees, from diverse backgrounds. Despite the various experiences, everyone present was tied to the one goal of improving business processes.
How to:
– increase revenue;
– reduce costs; and
– improve customer service.

Steve Towers demonstrated proven, practical methods and tools for advanced business process improvement and realising the above benefits by refocusing on successful customer outcomes (SCOs) using an “Outside In” strategy.

As one of the attendees in Brisbane has commented –
“I still find it incredible that in this conventional information and process rich world we live in that we can look at what we do in a slightly different but totally logical way and the picture changes (so) dramatically.” Charles Bennett, Managing Partner & Project Director at IBS Publishing

Many companies say that they are “customer focused”, but most fail to really put themselves in their customers’ shoes and deliver real solutions for their customers’ needs. This is where the methods and tools of the Certified Process Professional (CPP) Program can make a tangible difference to how you look at the business processes in your organisation.

If you are looking to improve your own professional skills in business process management and business process improvement, then I would recommend the Advanced Business Process Methods and Techniques of the Business Process Professional program by BP Group.

Stephen Nicholson
Certified Process Professional – Master

Search for other BPM and Outside In postings on this site.

Do businesses need to change their business process management strategy?

If you are unaware, there is a groundswell occurring in the business process management arena. Business analysts and business process management practitioners are leading us in a new direction – one of “customer centricity” or “outside-in”.

Particularly since the 1980s, businesses have been bombarded with various methods of business process improvement and quality management, including Six Sigma, Total Quality Management (TQM), Business Process Re-engineering (BPR), Lean, Business Process Management (BPM), etc. And now we are presented with “Advanced BPM (ABPM)”, “Outside-In” and “Customer Expectation Management (CEM)”.

Do we really need yet another new strategy in business process management and performance improvement? Is this just another fad? Why should we adopt yet another strategy or set of tools to manage our businesses?

When we first tried to impose structure and strategy to our businesses and workflow, the world was a much simpler place. We focused on just getting the work done and doing as much of it as possible. The volume of output was often seen as the measure of business success.

Today, the difference is that we, as consumers, have changed. We now have more choice, are more informed and have greater expectations than ever before.

The way we conduct our business, along with the changes in customer expectations, are the reasons why we need to change the way we manage our business processes. We no longer have the luxury of just “telling them and they will buy”. Companies are differentiating themselves by placing themselves in their customer’s shoes. In doing so, they are opening their businesses to greater success through reductions in cost, increases in revenue, and improvements in customer service.

Does this mean that the old process management tools are no longer valid? Do we have to scrap them and start again? I don’t think so. They still hold value and many remain very necessary within our businesses.

What we do need to review is the focus of our businesses, and therefore the tools we use in business process improvement.

What do you think?

Article – Customer Focus

In an interview in February 2010 with Harvard Business School, Ranjay Gulati discusses his recent book release and the need for companies to focus in creatively delivering value to customers. He highlights the requirement for placing the customer first and provides a roadmap of stages that companies pass through in the journey to reach customer centricity.

Read this article here:

The Outside-In Approach To Customer Service

When should an SME embrace BPM?

Small and medium enterprises rarely focus on formally establishing business processes or how they will be managed from the outset. After all, businesses are typically started through the enthusiasm and passion of one or two individuals – and that passion is purely focused on just “doing the business”. Having (hopefully) identified a market need, the aim is to get the sales through the door and start making money. Isn’t that how all businesses start off? Surely the rest will “take care of itself”?

While this approach may produce monetary results in the short term, and maybe even a profit, what happens as enthusiasm brings in more and more results? The business grows, more resources are required, and things start to become complicated. More staff are added to cover the growing workload. Profit becomes eroded. But everyone does what’s necessary to “get the job done”. The interesting thing about business growth is that it takes some time before individuals can afford to dedicate their time to specialist roles. So while employees may be employed in a specific role, very typically they are actually multi-tasking across multiple roles. And rarely does anyone stop long enough to focus the efforts of everyone and ensure that the product or service is being delivered to the customers consistently. How do you communicate the requirements of what needs to be delivered? How can results be delivered to customers consistently if the processes to produce them are inconsistent? How would you measure these inconsistencies anyway, if you haven’t benchmarked what it is you are delivering?

But this doesn’t just occur within small businesses. The reality is that these inconsistencies occur across organisations that employ 10, 50 and 500+ staff. And it is invariably evident within organisations that have been allowed to just evolve.

So at what point should processes, functions and strategic goals be aligned?

– As soon as the vision of the business is established and documented.

This is the point in time when all required roles within a business should be identified. Position descriptions (functions) for all roles should be documented. The overall business structure should also be documented in the form of an organisation chart.

With the strategic goals documented and functions defined, the processes of the business can also be documented – what needs to happen between receiving an order and delivering the goods/services? Importantly, all of this should be completed independently of whether individuals are available or have been identified to fulfill the roles of the business.

So why would a small business place any of its limited resources into documentation of the business? The biggest benefit in doing this is that it provides the basis of a plan for the business to move forward, and forms a tool for communicating this plan to others (new staff, clients, suppliers, etc). And no matter what label you attach to this exercise, the management of business processes starts with effective documentation of those processes. It is at this point when you start Business Process Management.

BPM Systems