International Process and Performance Institute

Greetings all, it is been far to long since I have shared some of my insights here at IPAPI. So let's get this show on the road and look at some of the finer points of great process that can help us all achieve greater success tomorrow than we did today!

Don't Expect what you Don't Deserve

Ouch - that's bringing it on right of the blocks isn't it? Yet this statement is deeply engrained to everything the Institute lives for because the real point is that you should not expect different results if you aren't doing anything differently. Same approach to process, same "solution" mindset, same result.

I point this out because even as I meet with senior professionals here in 2010 I am consistently finding that in a matter of days (sometimes hours) I can lead these people to uncover 40% - 70% process improvement opportunities that can be fully realized in 90 days or less, usually 30 days or less.

Consider this - at an executive dinner in London earlier this year that I was fortunate enough to be the guest speaker, we had a senior executive from Barclays that told us they have documented - documented - that 90% of the work their people do every single day is non value-add. What I was most impressed with in this conversation is the approach that lead to this finding was based on process task assessment against the creation of customer value. Basically, if a task didn't create customer value than it was considered non value-add.

So Barclays is now working to build a sustainable behavior of value-add change through process education focused on customer value - heart, soul and mind in alignment with what we preach here at the Institute! It will take some time to build that behaviour but I mark Barclays as a company to watch of the next few years. If the stick to it, we should see some amazing results. Of course this does beg one all powerful question: why aren't we all doing this? Remember, you can't get to that new place with the same old behaviors!

The Customer doesn't care about your Process!

Do we understand that the customer doesn't care about our process, that they only care about their experience? We should have that figured out by now...

But how far do we take that? Let's do a little test:

1 - Do you use words in your communication (phone, email, documents) with your customers that are meaningful to you but not to them? Almost every organization has its own common terms and language style. But often those terms are not common for our customers nor is our language style their language style. In fact, how many times do we use words - like the insurance industry that commonly uses the term "endorsement," a very uncommon word in general language style - and then expect the customer to understand what we are talking about?

Kind of sounds like a Moment of Truth doesn't it?

2 - How about the point of the communication? Like forms that look alike but one is a bill and the other is a statement when automatic withdrawal is setup on an account? Guess what, if it looks like a bill then it feels like a bill and I (the customer) must now check to see if it is a bill or not.

In addition, shouldn't the first and most prominent point be the purpose of the communication? Like:

WE HAVE ADDED A NEW DRIVER TO YOUR POLICY PER YOUR REQUEST!

instead of:

This is to notify you of the new endorsement on your policy

(and then include the added driver on the list of drivers on the second or third page).

Moment of Truth? You bet. This directly leads to customers contacting the company - confused, upset, worried, and often angry. Where is the value add here?

I'll close for now but I'll be working hard to share more here from now on. In our own way, we are changing the world... one Moment of Truth at a time.

Regards,

Terry