Cowboys and Call Centres This week's Kaizen Tip comes to you from Haider Imam at Kaizen Training Question: have you ever had an interaction with a company where an unexpected procedure was required at some point? Perhaps a procedure that felt out of place and made you think, "Why do they need to do it that way?" If so, you might just resonate with this story of what happened when I booked a certain train journey this month. My tickets had failed to appear by post in the time promised, so I called the company and was connected to an overseas call centre. Their response was that I needed to call from my home address one day before travelling: if the tickets still had not turned up, they would arrange to have them waiting at the ticket desk. As I would not be at home the day before that part of my journey, I said this wouldn't work; could they just have the tickets waiting at the desk for me anyway? The answer was a surprising "No - our policy says you must call from your home address the day before" accompanied by the phrase that became their mantra: "I'm just following the process, Sir". After an increasingly frustrating and lengthy conversation, involving three more repetitions of their mantra and being escalated to a manager, I was told the best solution would be "buy a new set of tickets then apply for a refund on my return"! Exasperated, I gave up. I decided it would be easier to call from my mobile the day before and pretend to be at home, although they informed me that they now knew I wouldn't be at home on that date, so my request may be invalidated! Anyway, I called the day before, pretending to be at home, and after being cross-examined on the subject, managed to have the tickets sent to the ticket desk. Job done. Here's the point: how many quirky processes and hurdles do you have in your Sales and Service organisation that may appear sound to you but: You're probably reading this thinking "None! They're all absolutely essential" while your customers may right now be hearing "I'm just following the process", so here's a simple method called 'the Customer Matrix' that we at Kaizen find useful for tackling these silent revenue killers. Along the top of a piece of paper, write down each of your measures of success with as far as customers are concerned (Hint: if you're well into double figures on this one, we need to talk!) Down the left hand side of the paper, write the 'odd' processes or measures you use to measure success (your front line people will be best placed to identify 'odd' procedures - just ask them) Start connecting items from the top line with items down the left that fit e.g. 'Customer referrals' connects directly to a process of 'Capturing customer feedback at end of call' or to a measure of Harvard's Net Promoter scoring method If you have items with few or no connections, you really have to ask yourself what purpose they serve. Call to Action: