What is Apple’s customer service number if your 69p app fails to download?
Or perhaps another questions for anyone that owns an iPod, iPad or iPhone: when was the last time you pressed “Buy” in the app store and it didn’t work?
Is encouraging the UK’s Local Authorities to share and/or merge the right thing to do?
For years (centuries?) there have been boundary issues, discussions and disputes between parishes, districts, boroughs and counties. Where are the lines to be drawn, and who takes responsibility? Each political area then has its own structure of management – and in most cases consists of: unpaid political leaders and members to give the strategic direction as voted for by the population, and a paid CEO, directors and managers to lead the staff.
Cost exist to be reduced.
I was reminded of this great quote from the master of the Toyota Production System today: “Costs do not exist to be calculated. Costs exist to be reduced.”
As a Chartered Accountant, I am well trained to understand cost – especially with respect to Activity Based Costing. Understanding the cost of every element of the process is clearly important. However, it is all too easy to then assume that these activities are actually necessary.
Check the Management System
Business issues can often feel either complicated or complex – and sometimes both. And yet I regularly see senior management trying to find a simple solution. If only life were that easy! I’m frequently asked to help diagnose serious business situations spanning hundreds of employees doing their job, together with their team leaders, managers and directors…
From A to B – The difference between Change Management and Work Design.
When I explain to people what it is that I do, the end result is often “Ah, you’re a change consultant.” The conversation rarely begins with “What are you actually changing to?”. It’s a bit like talking about a journey from A to B – and focusing solely on the car you’re driving, without ever considering where you’re actually going, or asking what’s wrong with where you are?
What is ‘Good’?
Fans of Only Fools & Horses will remember Dell-Boy’s great line to the supermarket check-out girl, “Did you sue them?” When asked who, he replied “The Charm School!” And many of us will have found ourselves in circumstances when we would have loved to use the same sarcastic wit.
Sledgehammer to crack a nut?
“Co-op looks to trolley mounted tablets to boost customer experience” Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for using technology to improve customer experience or even anything else in life come to that, but to me this seems like using … Continue reading →
The Economist Get’s Airport Check-in Wrong
In the Guliver blog on Economist.com (Check-in desks Time to check-out?), the writer suggest that airlines do away with airport check-in. We do it all on-line anyway, and who would miss the queues waiting for check-i anyway?. Well, for the most part, self-check-in is common, but not universal (59% of people still check-in at the counter). Airlines […]
The post The Economist Get’s Airport Check-in Wrong appeared first on Daniel W. Rasmus.
Keeping things simple?
Do you ever think that some of the management books and technical jargon are far more complicated than they really need to be? A recent podcast by the Freakonomics team reminded me of some simple service “production line” stuff that seems to get forgotten.Over the years, I have worked in many claims processing systems, and we undertook the usual “work-flow” analysis of all the steps – the usual post-it notes on the wall etc – we’ve all done it. There were 300 steps.When you look at which ones actually add value, there were only three (I’ve worked with many teams – it always boils down to three steps): meetassesspayAll the other steps were there to patch-up all the other steps that weren’t working properly.The team realised that they were actually spending time doing part of the work, finding themselves in the position of not being able to complete it, asking for more information, whilst the customer would phone into a separate help-desk in need of assistance. This would be repeated on a number of occasions over a lengthy period of time. Stylistically, spending 4 lots of 15 minutes over the period of about a month:The team I was working with experimented with a “Right-first-time” approach. The experts in the process (rather than the administrators) spent a little longer with each customer, working out the best and quickest way to complete each transaction. Where the work could not be completed, they examined why this was, and looked for different ways to improve this too.Within a few weeks, half of all claims were being completed within 1 hour. And the average time for all claims reduced from 13 days end-to-end 6.5 days. It looked more like this:Why does this matter?It’s great customer service.It costs less too.For half of the customers, we had taken away the need for them to call in chasing their claims – a saving of over £100,000.A systemic solution, that saved money, and improved customer service – perfect!If you’d like to know more, then please call me on 07775 595 595.Matt Arnold.
Utilities take another customer service bullet
December was another dire month for utility companies again after the recent publication of a Which? report outlining call waiting times for customer service versus sales lines.
