KaizenTip 114: It's not the people, stupid!

This week's KaizenTip comes to you from James Rosenegk of the Kaizen Team.
 
"Those stupid people.  Every time I ring they get it wrong.  Five times I've called them now and every time I get the same standard answer which doesn't resolve my query.  Then they thank me for calling and ask if there is anything else they can help me with.  They haven't helped me with my simple billing issue which is why I called in the first place!"
 
Sound familiar?  Fed up with all those scripts and stock answers?  Those attempts to get to speak to a supervisor or manager who themselves have another script or standard way of dealing with you?
 
Well, maybe it's not the people.  Maybe it's the processes and systems that have been put into place.  Or maybe it's the metrics and targets that have been layered on top of the inflexible system to standardise call handling times and maximise call volume.
 
So one of my questions to managers responsible for such systems is:  "How are you measuring and responding to failure demand?"
 
Do you realise how many times customers call back again because their problem is still unresolved?  Do you know what the end-to-end cycle time to resolve their problem is - perhaps in weeks rather than minutes?
 
So often repeat calls are being counted as part of normal call volume.  If you approach failure demand in this way then you're accepting inefficiency and ineffectiveness as part of everyday life.  These calls mean that you need to understand the root cause and change your approach to prevent them ever coming in.  Just finding a way to count them is failure demand at its simplest - but you can go beyond that to look at variance-based metrics as well as handovers, callbacks, escalations, and of course, total resolution cycle time.  In my example above, each of my calls was opened as a new case (extremely frustrating) and each call lasted between 5 and 35 minutes.  So is that 5 cases with an average cycle time of say 15 minutes per call?  No, it was one issue that took 9 weeks to resolve - a massive difference!
 
What do you need to be doing differently to spend a little more time with your customers, and give your intelligent and creative people more scope to go 'off script'?  To give them access to pull extra resources that they might need to fix the customer's problem in one call?  Oh, and by the way, you might just end up with a delighted customer rather than a disgruntled or angry one.  A customer who won't slam down the phone and then immediately google search for an alternative supplier.
 
Your call to action:

• If you're not already measuring failure demand, start immediately
• as a leader, take responsibility for the fact that "you get what you measure" and rethink all the metrics you're using.  Are these getting in the way of delighting your customers?
• Most of all, remember that most people want to do a great job - if they're allowed to.  It's the processes and systems that are usually getting in the way.  Seek feedback from your people, and from your customers, and make a paradigm shift in your service delivery.

You may discover that my next Google search leads me to you!
 
For more information on process excellence and customer delight, feel free to contact us - e-mail directors@kaizen-training.com.  Or visit our website at www.kaizen-training.com for case studies and free downloadable tools.