Operations & Service Delivery Processes
By Britain Harvey, Vice President, PMC Solutions

As you work in your business, begin to compile a basic manual for some of the typical tasks you do to serve your clients effectively. A great way to start is to make a note every time you do something that someone else could do for you. These may include:

• Bringing on a new client - Tasks included in this process might be how you collect payment details; when you send out a welcome pack; how and where you enter client details into your CRM system or customer management spreadsheet.
• Managing client billing - Tasks in this process might include how and where you enter details into your invoicing system; how and when you send out invoices; how you deal with and track down missing payments.
• Making a business purchase - Tasks for this process might include how you create a purchase order; how you purchase items with a company credit card; how and where to log the purchase in your inventory; how and where to file the receipt.
• Finishing work with a client - These tasks might include sending a thank you email; asking for feedback or a testimonial; how you plan to keep in touch with customers and sending details of further support available.
• Preparing a range of basic company information sheets which detail the key information you’re likely to need, including your official business/trading name, your company structure, date of incorporation (if relevant), trademark and copyright info and the names and contact details of professionals like your bank, accountant, insurance advisor, lawyer, etc.

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Question: What is the process for measuring customer relationships and customer satisfaction?

Answer: Customer satisfaction is an elusive measurement. Most organizations send annual customer surveys in an attempt to measure whether customers are satisfied. However, these surveys only go to existing customers and result in subjective, general responses. How do we capture new requirements that would satisfy or even delight customers? How do we measure the satisfaction of those who are on the edge of leaving us? How do we get useful actionable information from customers? Bruce Woopert at Graniterock decided to give his customers the ability to decide whether and how much to pay on an invoice based on their satisfaction with the product. The customer simply circled the amount on the invoice for the product/service he was not satisfied with, and deducted it from the total. "You often don’t know that a customer is upset until you lose that customer entirely. Short pay acts as an early warning system that forces us to adjust quickly, long before we would lose that customer." (Good to Great, Jim Collins, page 80).

We must also communicate with our customers in multiple ways and not only rely on an annual survey. How long has it been since your customers received a visit or a phone call from you? Do you have representatives in your customer’s shop? Do you know what they really need and want?

When I was in charge of an Air Force supply unit, we had four major customers: each of the flying squadrons. To increase customer satisfaction and get direct feedback, we created a bench stock of high demand items located at each customer’s maintenance buildings and assigned a member of my team to manage each one. As a result, backorders decreased dramatically and I knew much more quickly what my customers needed and how to meet their requirements. My measurement was their success in meeting their mission.

Customer surveys are useful but don’t rely on them as the only measurement. Give your customers additional ways to communicate specifics with a dose of personal contact and you will find you will have loyal, satisfied customers.

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Leon Spackman
Director, Business Process Services
Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt
PMP

Join PMC Solutions’ Leon Spackman from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. March 11 or from noon to 1:00 p.m. March 19 MDT for our FREE Customer-Focused Quality Webinar. We will discuss the importance of customers in your business and to process improvement. We’ll discuss who your customers are, how to define their requirements, how to prioritize those requirements, and how to tell if you are meeting your customer’s expectations. See you there.

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Creating Great Process Flow

Create a flow diagram of the business process to understand the goal of the business process and the required steps to reach the goal.

Before you begin to define a document routing process, you must analyze the work that your business performs, where and how it is performed, and by whom. An administrator or business analyst does this planning step.

Begin planning your document routing process by creating a paper flow diagram of the business process that you want to automate. You can begin with an abstract view of the process and then provide more detail as you interview the people who are involved in various steps of the process.

Consider how you want information and activities to flow. Where does the input originate? What is the final product? The final product might be the result of all the work accomplished by your business, by one department in your business, or by certain employees from different departments.

From your process flow diagram, you can also begin to identify the work nodes (work baskets, collection points, and business applications), any decision points, and any subprocesses required for your process. You can also identify points in your process where the process splits into parallel routes and then where it joins back into a single route. You define these document routing elements when you build your process, but you need to know what they are now so that you can plan the correct authorization for those elements.

For more information on how inProcess™ can help you gather and evaluate data, click here.

Ability to Link to Folders

Most compliance programs dictate "say what you do," and then "do what you say." By developing systematic processes, you surely are accomplishing “say what you do.” With the new ability in inProcess to link to a folder on your local area network (LAN), you can show compliance with “do what you say.” As an example, you may have a process that shows how you hold team meetings, and it may read something like this: schedule meeting, schedule conference room, send out agenda, attend meeting, take meeting minutes, and post minutes. With inProcess v.3.2 you can now link to the folder on your LAN where all your prior meeting minutes and agendas reside. Try having a compliance auditor find holes with this system!

For more new features of inProcess v. 3.2, click here.

"WOW...WOW...really...WOW!"

- NM State government official during inProcess software demonstration

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