The BusinessNext Bloghttp://www.business-next.com/blog/Discussion and ideas on strategy, visioning and changeen-GB2010-07-30T19:33:39ZSquarespace Site Server v5.11.5 (http://www.squarespace.com/)Delivering the Service that Customers Want.http://www.business-next.com/blog/2009/9/11/delivering-the-service-that-customers-want.htmlChris Ogden2009-09-11T13:50:45ZChange for most businesses is accelerating and customers, prospects and others are becoming more demanding about the service they want and how and when they want it.

It’s a challenge for any organisation to ensure that its service quality meets the increasing expectations of those who contact us for help or information or to buy something.

Here’s a story about customer service and new technology from over thirty years ago that still has resonance today:
 
I worked for a large New York bank that pioneered ATMs in its branches to take the pressure off its overworked and high-cost tellers. It was a big step and, notwithstanding extensive customer research, no-one was quite sure how customers would react to these “impersonal” machines.

To encourage their use the bank reduced transaction costs for customers using ATMs and soon found long lines for the ATMs and eerily empty banking halls staffed by under-occupied tellers. It transpired that rather than having to deal with an irascible teller most customers preferred to deal with a machine and were actually prepared to pay a premium to do so.

The lesson I learned from this story is that it pays to understand how customers, prospects, and the rest of us want to deal with an organisation and why. In doing so we need to challenge conventional wisdom, especially since today, new media, particularly social networking, is changing how people expect us to communicate.

These new media also ensure that news of outstandingly good or just bad service gets disseminated very quickly to our customers, prospects, competitors, shareholders and anyone with an interest in our business. The costs of repairing the damage can be very high indeed.

Even though technology-delivered-service is often seen as more cost efficient (and therefore to be maximised) and good customer service people costly (and therefore to be minimised), designing your customer interactions only on this basis won’t win the support of your customers.

(By the way, if you haven’t already discovered it, you’ll almost certainly find that because they deal with your customers and prospects daily, your front line customer service people probably know more about the nuances and problems of your customer-facing processes. And they’ll almost certainly have many more potential solutions than the Marketing Department.)

The survival of the fittest

As technologies and software evolve, communications improve and costs plummet, service can be delivered from almost anywhere on earth where language and infrastructure permit.

At the same time the costs of well-trained people capable of delivering high quality service people has increased.
    
Companies have also discovered that many people have preferences for being served by people located in the UK.

Combine these factors with an environment where second class service is punished quickly and ferociously and where organisations - whether public or private sector - are being squeezed for cash, then the question is what to do.

The place to start is to understand the minutiae of your customers’ journey and the detailed impact this journey has on the design of your customer-facing processes. If you can design automated business processes and systems that deliver what the customer wants without having to resort to complaining to a human being then you have the solution. You will still need to continually upgrade and extend the system to handle the increasing number of media that your customers will want to use.


Japan has shown how a dedicated six sigma approach delivers automobiles with superior reliability and design. What the Japanese did for cars so we can do for our service businesses. Over time people will become increasingly comfortable using good automated systems rather than people.

In the mean time both are needed.


Peter Wesley

Peter is a partner at BusinessNext Limited, an experienced Marketing Director in and Consultant to Service Industries.
If you’d like to contact him to talk about any aspect of this article call him on (+44) 07887 944850.

]]>Bureaucracy - what is it and how is it changing?http://www.business-next.com/blog/2009/9/2/bureaucracy-what-is-it-and-how-is-it-changing.htmlChris Ogden2009-09-02T15:54:42Zarticificial intelligence bureaucracy mindsetBureaucracy is a subject we all love to talk about. We see it in our organisations and we experience it when we deal with government and large business. No subject evokes our ire more, and on none are we more expert or more vocal in our opinion.

But perhaps the idea of bureaucracy might be ready for re-examination. Today, the word seems to be commonly associated with characteristics such as these: hierarchical authority controlled from the centre and operating at many levels; lack of initiative; excessive adherence to rules and routine; inefficiency; or, even more seriously, an impersonal force.

Two ideas associated with bureaucracy are worth exploring. The first is that bureaucracy is a mindset. In a recent interview with the BBC's Robert Peston, Adair Turner, the Chairman of the Financial Services Authority, noted that the failure of the regulatory mechanisms in the recent financial crisis was in part down to the tendency for regulation to breed a fixed mindset rather than a willingness to stand back and take a big picture view. But it's not easy to challenge the system, when doing so may threaten your job or your chances of promotion. Better, perhaps, to keep your head down and follow the rule book.

Bureaucracy thus seems to breed organisational cultures where adherence to rules is seen as key, irrespective of the value added or subtracted. Entrepreneurial concepts such as taking reasonable risks to gain exceptional rewards for the organisation become alien concepts. Eventually, keeping to rules becomes the bureaucracy’s own survival mechanism

The second key aspect of bureaucracy is that it came into being in large part because of the need of nation-states and later, organisations, to direct and control very large assemblies of people to achieve some goal. Over the last two thousand years, states have created bureaucracies as the necessary means by which they could exercise power, wage war and protect their citizens. In ancient times, work for many or most people was in the employ of the state. The British Empire was a more recent example of how half the world was administered by one of the largest bureaucracies of modern times.

Bureaucracies, therefore, operated as processes (performed by people) that enacted the rule book of the organisation or nation-state. They come into being to deal with complexity. We don't operate a bureaucracy in our personal lives. We schedule Sally's music classes and plan next year's holidays without needing a complex apparatus of servants and systems. But delivering health care to 62 million citizens or collecting taxes is the ultimate complexity nightmare.

We now live on the cusp of massive changes in the way that the apparatus of states and large enterprises operates. This will have a profound impact on our ideas of what a bureaucracy is and whether it is needed. The change is not once in a generation, or once in a lifetime. The change before us is as significant as the agrarian revolution, or the industrial revolution. And like these epochal events before, those living through them could not foresee what kind of world would emerge. We are similarly doomed to struggle with the implication of the forces operating today.

The key reason for this shift is the inexorable rise of technology.  Systemic technology - the marriage of computer technology with the automation of processes that could once only be performed by humans - is the first key component. The second is social media technology. Together, these interleaving developments are changing how organisations and governments operate and how they deliver products and services.

The first of these trends means that much of what was once delivered by people is now being delivered by computers and the Web. The rules and processes for how the enterprise does this are being embedded in these automated systems. And people within these enterprises spend their time creating, modifying and maintaining these rules. None of this immediately gives hope that bureaucracy will be reduced; if anything it may be reinforced. Yet developments in artificial intelligence may one-day help by enabling the processes to be self-modifying as the system itself learns and evolves.

The second trend is also interesting. As people network in ever more open environments through Twitter, Facebook and similar social media, organisations cannot expect to control every aspect of their employee’s behaviour. As employees interact with customers, suppliers and others through the open Web, organisations are realising that managing conformity and adherence to rules must be selective. Apple famously controls its research and delivery secrets, yet when dealing with customers it must interact and listen like any other dynamic organisation.

These two forces - the one that will encourage rigidity and conformity, and the other which can open up organisations - are thus set to compete for attention in the years ahead. It will be interesting to see how the debate unfolds, and the kinds of organisation that emerge. Let's hope that we won't use the b-word to describe them.

]]>The Why and When of Business Twitteringhttp://www.business-next.com/blog/2009/4/30/the-why-and-when-of-business-twittering.htmlChris Ogden2009-04-30T20:50:00ZTwitterMaking Twittering effective: what works, what doesn't

For the last couple of months I've been reading Tweets, and issuing a few of my own. There's no doubt in my mind that Twitter is a significant step forward in the evolution of the Web. So I've been paying attention to what people actually use Twitter for, when they use it, and what I find useful. I'm assuming here that we're talking about things in your work and business life that you're truly passionate about.

Tweets seem fall into a few, very distinguishable categories.

First, the "I'm doing this now.." variety. These are not usually very useful or interesting. Unless your followers are mainly a personal groups of friends or relatives, I'm afraid we're unlikely to be terribly interested that you are having a beer with your good friend Jack. Especially if that's your 7th Tweet of the day, and the others were like this one.

Second, the undisguised self-promotion variety. OK, if we've become your follower, we expect that you may be going to lots of Board meetings, or having lunch with important people. But there's no need to tell us, unless it relates to something very original, useful and informative.

Third, the "have you seen this web site?" variety. These Tweets can be very useful. But if the Web site is genuinely something really interesting that you think your followers would find valuable, then why not write a short review and put it on your blog, in addition to providing the link to the site in question. (You do have a blog, don't you?).

Fourth, the "glimpse into my personal life" Tweet. You know what I mean: "Feeling out of sorts today so working at home. A cup of coffee may fix me up"; or even more verging on the agony: "Just picking up the kids from West Witterpool Primary, planning special treat as it's Mathilda's birthday, so heading now for KidHeaven".

So what makes for interesting Twittering for your followers? Here's my stab at it:

1. Say something useful. Ask yourself what you've done, or about to do that could genuinely be of value to someone in your follower community. Twittering for business is about providing value. OK, hopefully it will expand your follower base so that you may attract more potential clients or customers, so show them what you have to offer that is really worth knowing. If not, shut up!

2. Tell us if you've made new and helpful connections. Promoting someone else in your list of contacts who has been genuinely helpful or original is worth saying. The person or organisation may also be of interest to your followers. But, of course, don't make personal references without being sure your contact is OK with this.

3. Say something insightful. What thoughts have you had that you hope are original? Tell us. But don't be surprised if we disagree. Be quotable.

4. Develop some themes. Tweet watchers will start to form a view based on what you have been saying anyway. So think about this in advance. Do my Tweets have a theme? Do they form some sort of on-going narrative of my ideas? Hopefully they do, and make sure you hashtag the key themes.

5. The occasional quote from sages present and past are always interesting, but don't overdo it. It can make you look, well, pretentious, and remember there are plenty of quotes sites out there that do it better.

We're all discovering what we like and dislike about the Tweets we subscribe to, and no doubt we'll change our minds a few times over the coming months. Let me know if you agree or not.

]]>Ageism in work. 21st century racism?http://www.business-next.com/blog/2009/2/10/ageism-in-work-21st-century-racism.htmlChris Ogden2009-02-10T09:22:54ZWe have gone a long way to eradicate racism. We now need to make the same progress to eliminate ageism from corporate life. On Monday night I watched Channel 4's "Dispatches" programme on this subject ("Too old to work") and it was depressing viewing. Those of us in the same age bracket (or heading there) as those featured in the programme should shudder. Why are we not out on the streets with placards? The programme clearly showed that this is a issue in society at large, but - to take the way we dealt with racism as an example - you only change society by changing laws. The now familiar responses to job applications ("You're too experienced", "You'd be bored") showed that business just doesn't get it. The public sector is no better.

I'm lucky in this regard. A long time ago I decided that I would like to have a career where I could work independently, and work for as long as my enthusiasm and energy allowed. That's why I moved into management consulting. But many of my friends and associates have come into consulting after redundancy, where they have found that getting a job again is next to impossible, as the programme amply showed.

The answer should not have to be that everyone becomes a consultant, even though that may suit many. The answer is to change employment law to make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of age. Period.

 

]]>Putting Twitter into perspectivehttp://www.business-next.com/blog/2009/2/2/putting-twitter-into-perspective.htmlChris Ogden2009-02-02T06:59:37ZAs you may have noticed, I have been experimenting with Twitter. A couple of my friends got me onto it, and I'm always keen to see what new ways there are to communicate. The interesting question is where all this is talking to each other is going to end up.

In the post-Internet era we seem to have gone through a number of stages of evolution in our communications.

First there was plain old email.

]]>Blogs - where word processing was thirty years agohttp://www.business-next.com/blog/2008/10/13/blogs-where-word-processing-was-thirty-years-ago.htmlChris Ogden2008-10-13T07:08:54ZWeb lifeI am old enough to remember a world before word processing; when what you wrote was scribbled on paper, sent to a "typing pool"and eventually, after much delay, emerged into the light of day.

When word processing programmes finally became available there was the usual pattern of take - up: the first movers, eager to try new technology, the laggards who resisted, and the Luddites who steadfastly continued to scribble on paper.

I have nothing against those who wish to scribble or even those who continue to use typewriters. By comparison with crisp paper, the smell of ink, and the thump of keys, word processing does seem to lack some essential soul. But for getting the job done when copy calls, we have all, reluctantly or otherwise, become our own word processors.

I was thinking about this the other day in connection with blogging and the creation of one's own web sites. We are at the same stage now with this technology as we were thirty years ago with word processing.

Most people don't have their own Web site or write their own blogs. Till now, creating  a web site has been a  non-trivial task, involving specialist software, employing designers and learning at least a bit of HTML. Most small businesses or individuals wishing to have a web presence have had to resort to specialists who could create a design and transfer our word-processed content onto the site.

Getting a web-presence today is like it was learning to do your own word processing thirty years ago. We are at the start of another significant revolution. The dramatic rise of bloggers and blogging systems means that anyone can easily create a web presence. But whereas most people who have to write something today do their own word processing, only a tiny percentage think about having a web site or even a blog page.

The issue, as with all new technologies, is need. Word processing was driven  from the need to write term papers, compose letters to errant companies, or to get in touch with government. When we need to write things for more public consumption, then having your own web site will become as ubiquitous as doing your own WP.

The good news is that the technology is improving. I am writing this on a web site developed with SquareSpace. No, I'm not receiving any money from promoting this system. It's just the best around.

So, if you've got something to say in public, then there's no longer any excuse.

]]>Maasai on strategyhttp://www.business-next.com/blog/2008/7/27/maasai-on-strategy.htmlChris Ogden2008-07-27T15:23:00ZLast week I spent the afternoon in the Maasai tribal lands. Well, not exactly, but I did have the good fortune to attend an "event" that featured eight colourfully-attired Maasai warriors singing, chanting and even leaping according to their traditional ways. The event was organised by Chris Howe and his ChangeMaker organisation, and introduced by the irrepressible Anthony Willoughby. Anthony   seems to run, be involved with or have started many kinds of companies that specialise in change, all of them from a very different perspective to the norm. Hence the Maasai warriors. 

In the Maasai, men and women learn leadership skills from a  very early age, and, as they grow older, assume increasingly larger leadership roles within their tribe. Leadership for a Maasai child might be simply being observant enough to see that a chicken had been stood on by a cow and needed attention. 

At the workshop I met a number of consultants working in change and strategy. And I took away a number of important reminders about change and how to make it work. The ideas weren't really new but the way they were expressed was novel. For example, in strategy, a suggestion was to emulate the Maasai and adopt the "art of unfair competition". When the Maasai have to kill a lion that has been attacking their village, they make sure that the lion can't win. One better than "competitive advantage" I think!

As I chatted to other practitioners in the breaks, one comment I received about my own approach was that "oh, you come at it from the process viewpoint". That set me thinking. Somehow I seemed to have been categorised. And I was in a different camp from them.

This seems to me to be unfortunate. Change needs to combine both aspects: process and hearts and minds. Ignoring the former means that people can lose track of where they are going and how they are going to get there. Conversely, missing the opportunity to engage with the spirit can stop a process in its tracks.

What we in the west take away from engaging with these wonderful people emphasises our deep need for a spiritual connection with work. Process without hearts and minds is dull and uninspiring. But hearts and minds also needs process.

Videos of the Maasai session at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3IgR8Hy5YIQ and http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/career_and_jobs/article4421544.ece 

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