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14th Jun 10
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The family of one of my friends, David, when I was young owned a small bakery. There were another few bakeries in town, but theirs was, without a doubt, the best one in our town – and for miles around. When they moved, it became the best bakery in that town also. David’s mother and father were from Germany and they were excellent cooks of anything with wheat flour and sugar, icing, or glaze. At twelve, David was already well-versed in business and I got to see him selling to customers many times.
One thing I noticed that stuck with me my entire life. The customer was never wrong. Surprised? Probably not. We’ve all heard the phrase before but how many of us can put it into practice? Swallowing pride is tough – and impossible in some situations. But, if you could consistently operate your business according to this simple concept it would likely thrive – assuming all else is in order.
David was good at business because he saw the customer as the most important person in the bakery, not himself. His parents weren’t even as good at customer service as David was. I saw him give free donuts to kids. I saw him give a whole box of donuts to a customer that dropped hers. I saw him argue with a customer gently for 10 minutes trying to get him to understand why something was the way it was… and then he said, “OK, for you” and gave the customer what she wanted with a genuine smile.
I saw him say “OK” when things were far from OK. David, as a teen, had the core business fundamental, “Do the right thing” ingrained in his head and he was awesome at it. The customer was always right. If there was a question about eating the cost on something – he ate it. His parents were in agreement with it most time, but I saw him presenting a case for a customer he refunded money to once. His dad said he’d give the bakery away if someone asked for it.
David’s business persona was nothing like his personality in person. That’s what shocked me I guess, and why I remember things so vividly. David was like any other crazy teenage boy outside the bakery, and yet when he went inside he was totally customer focused and in customer service mode.
When you run your business according to the “do the right thing” principle, you have the opportunity to make almost everything ‘right’. You can manage almost every misunderstanding, disagreement, or argument that occurs. If you are operating your business according to this principle it’s never an issue about getting into a heated argument – because you just won’t. The customer is right because after they walk out that door of the business you worked so hard to build, they can start to work on tearing your business down. Unhappy customers spread their unhappiness by word of mouth as often as they can. Have too many unhappy customers – though you may have been “right” – and you’ll ruin your business anyway.
In an argument both sides are looking for a win or a way out. If there is no way you can give your customer a win – then give them a way out. An easy way out. You should give this some forethought and have some options you can offer the customer that is less than what they want, but that gives them something that can be taken as a small win. For some customers, they’ll never be satisfied with anything less than a total win. If you’re not prepared to start down the path of destroying your entire business – give them the win. Look at it this way – you did the right thing, and, you’ll never see that person or their friends again.
Every day you are working you have to keep this long-term strategy of doing the right thing in mind. Your business is a long-term investment of your time, energy, money, and emotions. Doing the right thing can be the ideal business model.
ori[ ak��&��$that time, if possible.
Prioritizing System
To set up your own priority system, list all of your pending activities and then group them according to their level of importance. How you assign value to a task is not as important as long as you use the same format each day. Many people use an A, B, C system, and others use a 1, 2, 3 format. Here are suggested criteria for assignment:
Priority A-Must do or critical items. Some things must be done because of management directives, local, state, or federal regulations, importance to customers or clients, deadlines, or opportunities they provide for your success or advancement (e.g., state tax reports, actions requested by a customer, or application for a position in the organization with a specific cutoff date for submission).
Priority B-Should do. Items in this category are of medium value. Although they may contribute to customer satisfaction and improved performance, they are not essential or do not have critical deadlines (e.g., mailing an unsolicited information kit to a customer about a new product or developing a proposal for changing an existing system or process).
Priority C-Nice to do. This is the lowest category and includes tasks that are not a direct link to customer satisfaction. They may even be fun or interesting, but could be omitted or left undone. Postponing or scheduling such priorities until a slower time period will likely have little or no impact on customer service (e.g., meeting with team members to brainstorm ideas for a more efficient layout of cubicles, cleaning old e-mail files, or neatly lining up the products on a shelf).
Note: As you go through your e-mail and voice mail messages at the times you have scheduled throughout the day, prioritize them, and add them to your list of things to do.
The key to effective time management is to have a plan and work that plan. If you control your time, you and your customers both stand to gain from your efforts.
ossibR ad��$`$uctive activities that can be done during the waiting period.
Overproduction – This ties in directly with inventory and waiting. Overproducing and waiting results in excessive inventory. A client of mine used to make product and then package it in finished goods based on customer forecast. Many times when the orders came in, the customer wanted different packaging than forecast so my client had to open up finished goods boxes, take the product out of packages and repackage them per the customer order. A waste of time, packaging materials and warehouse space as well as the opportunity cost of working on other orders.
In this case, the solution was to manufacture goods based on better customer forecasts (push) and then package and ship based on customer order (pull). This reduced inventory and rework as well as shipping orders more quickly.
Takeaway – look for ways to get better information to better forecast needs and figure out ways to maximize production efficiencies so finished goods can be shipped immediately upon completion.
Overprocessing – This is usually an issue when one sub-process is much more efficient than other sub-processes. For example, you run the payment processing section for a credit card operation. You decided to buy a high speed envelope opener that opens 60 envelopes/minute. Sounds great except for the fact that your staff can only process 30 payments per minute. The increased speed in letter opening does not increase the throughput at the end of the process. The money spent on this machine is wasted if it does not result in increased throughput for the whole process.
Takeaway – you must look at an entire process and measure it from beginning to end. Increased speed in one sub-process does not necessarily result in better total results. A processes’ throughput is only as good as its biggest bottleneck!
Defects – We’ve all heard the phrase, “do it right the first time” and that is the essence of this element. Defects in outputs (products, documents, deliverables, etc.) that causes the output to be disposed of or to need rework results in wasted materials, time and scheduling as well as missing customer delivery dates or client due dates.
I had a client that had a large department devoted entirely to back office error correction based on incomplete or inaccurate data that was input by customers via the web. By making some web form adjustments that required data to be input a certain way and rejecting customer submissions unless they were complete and accurate, we eliminated the “waste” of error correction by eliminating the problem at the source.
Takeaway – build quality into your processes so no rework is required. Determine the root cause of defects and eliminate the problem at the source and refuse to implement “band aid” solutions related to the symptoms.
I have found that by intentionally looking for waste based on these seven elements, I see waste everywhere. It’s like putting on different glasses and seeing a different world in front of you. For the next week, I challenge you take the seven elements (acronym is TIM WOOD for memory purposes) and look for them intentionally in all that you do.
I believe you will be amazed at how many wasteful things you will see through the course of the week and it will inspire you to get more “lean” in all that you do. Different lenses show you different things. Please let me know what you see!
Tags: management
