The post The Rackspace Customer Experience Secret Sauce: An Interview with Rackspace COO Mark Roenigk appeared first on shmula.

I am very excited to present this interview with Mark Roenigk, the Chief Operating Officer of Rackspace. For those who may not know, Rackspace is a hosting and cloud computing company, that has grown very fast and has created a tremendous amount of customer loyalty and endearment.

In this interview, we’ll learn about how Rackspace has placed the customer at the center of their activities and the role the Rackspace employees play in making the organization focused on the customer. We’ll also learn the role of Process Improvement within the context of their internal NPS program, which is also very respected and known for its rigor and effectiveness in helping the firm remain focused on the customer.

I also have a bit of a disclosure: Mark and I have known each other for many years. He has been a very close friend and mentor and I have learned much and continue to learn from him. Aside from being an exceptional professional and executive, he is down-to-earth, humble, and a good man. I’m grateful he’s accepted this opportunity to share with us some of the secret sauce that has made Rackspace such a beloved company and an NPS powerhouse.

1. Mark, thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions. For those who may not know Rackspace, can you share a little about the company and also please share with us a little about yourself and what role you play at Rackspace?

Rackspace is a hosting and cloud computing company founded in 1998 in San Antonio. Rackspace is the founder of OpenStack, the standard open-source operating system for cloud computing, and a founding member of the Open Compute Project. We are known for our renowned Fanatical Support, which we deliver to more than 200,000 business customers from data centers on four continents.

I serve as Chief Operating Officer at Rackspace, responsible for the computing platforms on which Rackspace delivers products, services and support. I started my career as an engineer at Compaq before moving into management, later holding senior leadership roles at Microsoft, Intuit, Sirius XM and eBay. I came to Rackspace in 2009 because I was drawn to the culture and the inspiring mission to be one of the world’s leading service company.

2. Rackspace is well known for its fanatical focus on the customer. The first Rackspace core value is “Fanatical Support: Create customer experiences that create emotional attachment”. Why is that important and how does Rackspace accomplish that core value?

Let’s face it; we sell technology, an abundant commodity that can be created, sold and purchased with minimal human interaction from multiple providers. So, being in the technology market, we at Rackspace had to ask: What is our differentiator? What is our claim to fame? How can we add value and keep our customer coming back?

We have chosen Fanatical Support® to serve as that differentiator. At Rackspace, we know that customer satisfaction and building long-lasting relationships with our customers is our most important objective. Satisfied customers will tell their colleagues about Rackspace, becoming promoters for our brand and an external sales force for our company. Therefore, Fanatical Support is essential to our business; it is what lies at the core of our company because we know it’s essential to our success.

Our customers run a lot of very different businesses, and we don’t expect them to all be tech savvy; that’s our job. We ensure that we have diverse talent with deep expertise to help our customers solve problems and learn more about the best solutions for their needs.

3. Let’s talk about your NPS program. When did Rackspace begin its NPS Journey and how is it going?

NPS is a metric that measures customer loyalty by asking them to answer one question based on a scale from 1 to 10: How likely are you to recommend Rackspace to a friend or colleague? We’ve been asking this question in one form or another as far back as 2003-2004 when the original Harvard Business Review article was published. However, we quickly realized that just asking the question and calculating a score doesn’t get you very far. We track customer’s responses to detect positive or negative shifts in their satisfaction, so we can reach out to a customer directly if need be. This way, NPS is not a static number. Instead, it is a real-time assessment of our company’s performance and success. A strong NPS program needs a great deal of underlying discipline in how we analyze feedback and take action.

The program matured a bit more beginning in 2008. Since then, we’ve continued to tweak our approach and each business unit has customized aspects of the program to fit their needs. We also use NPS to examine our internal employee engagement, as well our internal performance on back office functions – what we refer to as “Rackers serving Rackers.” Understanding satisfaction within our own four walls led us to be listed this year as No. 34 in Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For.”

4. Lanham Napier, Rackspace CEO, has called NPS the “greatness metric”. What does he mean by that? Additionally, it’s been said that Mr. Napier reads customer open-ended responses every day. Is that really true? If the CEO connects with customers in that way, how does that customer-centric behavior from the top down affect the rest of the company?

Lanham is a strong communicator – his messages resonate powerfully with Rackers. A critical theme over the past several years has been about the difference between good and great companies, and the focus necessary to ensure a path to ‘great.’ His message is simple and speaks to the fact that so many metrics we see today reflect a company’s path to ‘big’ without representing customer sentiment. Ours is a loyalty strategy, and Lanham believes the path to greatness comes through earning 9’s and 10’s from all of our customers.  His specific quote is: “Greatness is achieved when customers say we are great.”

Lanham has been reviewing customer feedback every day for a long time. Transparency is a core value here, and we are very open with customer voice at Rackspace. Randomly selected responses are distributed routinely, and it’s not unusual for Lanham to call these customers directly to say “thank you” or offer his help to customers with negative feedback. The Rackspace Board of Directors also reviews NPS feedback in their quarterly meetings. It’s definitely an effective leadership tool, and it helps hold Rackers across the organization accountable for doing the same.  It’s one of several mechanisms for keeping a customer focus.

5. Rackers. What is a Racker? Was the name deliberately chosen? “Customer Service Rep” is the more common title – why is Racker better than using CSR?

Customer service rep explains a job function within a company that involves interaction with customers through technology. At Rackspace, all employees are Rackers, not just those who deal directly with the customer. A Racker is someone who embodies our core values, has a commitment to service and is dedicated to the vision of the company. It is more than a label like lawyer, accountant or customer service representative. Being a Racker allows our employees to create a shared identity despite the job function they perform, and it creates a company-wide sense of camaraderie. In fact, we call our onboarding process “Welcome Home”; symbolizing the ultimate feeling of belonging the moment you start as a new hire. Our customers pick up on this sense of community as well, and it provides a sense of reassurance to know they have such a unified workforce behind them.

6. Rackspace has an internal Lean Six Sigma program. Tell us how NPS and Lean Six Sigma work together at Rackspace to improve the customer experience?

NPS is a critical input to the voice of our customers.  Rackspace utilizes NPS feedback to determine high impact areas for improvements in our products and services.  Business leaders partner with Operational Excellence (LSS program) and the NPS team to strategize how to make these improvements for our customers. These opportunities are taken to our “Racktivity Room”, a space where cross-functional teams meet to solve problems and innovate. Through a series of “Racktivites” (Lean /Six Sigma / Innovation Games and Program Management Tools), teams create solutions to make these opportunities a reality.

7. Is there anything else you’d like to share?

We have passionate Rackers innovating the industry in Open standards and fanatical support every day, because they are truly passionate about the success of our customers. This kind of culture is the reason the whole industry is buzzing about hybrid cloud right now; a combination of public cloud, private cloud, and dedicated bare metal computing powered behind OpenStack.  We are able to offer customers massive gains in performance, reliability, security, and cost-effectiveness that aren’t seen with other service providers. Rackspace is committed to helping our customers change the world- and we will do anything to make sure of it.

Mark Roenigk, Rackspace COO

As Chief Operating Officer, Mark is responsible for the computing platforms on which Rackspace delivers products, services and support.   Mark reports directly to Lanham Napier, CEO.

An engineer by trade, Mark manages Rackspace’s global infrastructure and associated services such as data center engineering & operations, hardware design & configuration, networking, infrastructure services (storage, backup, and data protection), supply chain and procurement.

He is also is responsible for global security, internal enterprise IT and the customer service tools that enable Rackers to deliver Fanatical Support.

Mark started his career as an engineer at Compaq before moving into management, and later held senior leadership roles at Microsoft, Intuit, Sirius XM and eBay.    Mark is regularly requested to participate on expert panels to discuss technology trends, supply chain innovation, net promoter programs and leadership.   He has published articles in the fields of leadership, supply chain and digital & physical anti-counterfeiting technologies.

Mark has been a strong supporter of charities dedicated to enriching the lives of children with disabilities. He is on the Board of Directors of Taelor’s House Foundation and supports the Prader-Willi Syndrome Association, Special Olympics and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

What does Mark like best about working at Rackspace? The culture. “If you give Rackers a vision and a strategy it will absolutely get done,” he says. “There’s nothing we think we can’t do.”

Mark holds a BBA degree in management from Texas A&M University.

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The post Applying Continuous Improvement to Service Delivery with Adam Ramshaw appeared first on shmula.

We’re please to host Adam Ramshaw today, a Customer Experience consultant with more than 20 years of experience in helping organizations improve their service delivery. In this article, he shares with us his thoughts on the intersection of process improvement and customer experience and how applying Continuous Improvement to Service Delivery can improve the customer experience.

You can learn more about Adam after the article. We hope you find this interview helpful and that you’ll take some nuggets from this interview and be able to apply lessons learned to your application of customer experience management in your industry.

1. Adam, can you briefly share with the audience what led you, among all the possible areas of business, to focus on the customer experience?

About 15 years ago I was the global head of marketing for a telecoms equipment manufacturer. Part of the role was to provide actionable feedback to the service delivery groups on what customers really wanted. Simple customer satisfaction surveys existed but no really robust way understand what was actually important to clients. I decided that there had to be a more robust and empirical approach and that was what started me down the customer experience track.

2. Can you share with us the best experience you’ve had as a customer? What made it so good?

I can’t pick one experience that was the best but I can say the difference between a poor experience and a great experience is often just having employees think.

Too often staff don’t think about what they are saying or why they are doing a particular thing. This can be as simple as not actually listening to what you are asking and thereby giving you a response that does not solve your problem.

3. Let’s talk about customer service. Historically, customer service has been a cost center in most companies. Can customer service be strategic? If so, how and please share examples of where you’ve seen customer service play a strategic role in a company.

Actually every area of a business is a cost centre: sales, marketing, finance, R&D, logistics, manufacturing, etc. The difference is that many of those other centres have clearly linked their presence to the generation of company profit.

Sales make sales, R&D create great new products, Manufacturing build stuff. On the other hand those areas that have not highlighted the link between their presence and company profit are necessary evils that are subject to continuous downward cost pressure: finance, logistics, yes, and often customer service. In the last 10 years even Marketing has seen the light and is now linking their performance as closely to sales as possible.

Customer service can, and often is, strategic but traditionally they have not invested in clearly linking their presence to company value. This is why there is continuous cost pressure for them.

It doesn’t always have to be this way. One of our customers performs service recovery call backs on customers with low scores in their transactional feedback surveys. Of course, many organizations do this, but the difference is that they have calculated the incremental value that this call drives for the business and discovered that it is higher than the cost of the call. The result is that instead of pressure to reduce the service recovery calls, management are trying to expand the program. Service is a strategic asset to their business.

4. Is the customer always right?

No but they always have the last say and that’s all that matters.

5. In terms of customer experience metrics, many companies use the Net Promoter Score. What other metrics, from your experience, that effectively measure the customer experience?

Over the years we have tested a number of different metrics: Customer Satisfaction, Customer Effort Score, Net Promoter Score, complex multi-element scores etc. We have found that NPS and CSat are generally the most effective at translating the score into action. While some of the multi-element scores may be slightly more accurate than, say NPS, in predicting future customer actions, they are much harder for staff to understand and use.

I prefer effectiveness over accuracy every time. NPS and CSAT are more effective and accurate enough to be useful.

6. What’s your view on Detractor Avoidance versus Customer Delight, or both?

I’m not a big fan of Customer Delight because it is very hard to convert into procedures that staff can follow. I think that Detractor Avoidance and upgrading business processes is an easier and more reliable a long term route to success.

Let’s talk about an oft cited example: Amazon. For me, Amazon’s critical success factor has been to make everything easy, all the time, and deliver on what they promise every time. The books you buy from Amazon are not better or different than anywhere else. They don’t delight me by sending me two copies when I order one. However, they are easy to buy from (e.g. 1-click buying) and deliver every time.

7. Let’s suppose you are working with a company that lacks understanding of how the emotional aspects of the customer experience can impact both loyalty and the bottom line – psychobabble would be how the company characterizes discussions around customer sentiment and emotion.

What approach would you take to help others see the value on the emotional and less quantified aspects of the customer experience?

I’ll skip this question — I take the view that everything, even emotional aspects of the customer experience should be measurable otherwise you have no way to manage the process.

8. Tell us about the role of process improvement in the field of customer experience? Are they compatible, how? – would love some examples where you’ve applied the principles of lean to improve the customer experience – keeping company names confidential, of course.

Process improvement holds the same role in customer experience as it holds everywhere else in the organization: it is a critical underpinning of long term success. The trouble is that while the manufacturing group have been using quality system tools for generations most of the rest of the organization, customer experience included, have never heard of them.

To divert a little from your question, this is a critical issue going forward for customer experience. In the past this area of the business has not had any reliable way to measure their “manufacturing output”. As a result it has suffered from a lack of data. Sure, customer experience folks have had plenty of cost measurements: AHT, hourly rates, telecoms charges, etc. However, until tools like SMS and email surveys made transactional customer feedback affordable, there has been no equivalent to the continual measurement processes that manufacturing organizations use to ensure that they are meeting or exceeding specifications.

Now is the time for customer experience organisations to embrace continual improvement and the quality tools that the manufacturing group have been using to dramatically improve delivery.

9. Any final words of advice, or anything else you’d like to share?

Don’t wait until it’s perfect, do something now! Many (most) organizations want to design the perfect system then collect perfect customer feedback and finally do perfect analysis before they will take any action on customer experience. The trouble is all of those perfects never line up. This desire for perfection has to do with not wanting to make a mistake and be singled out but it simply stops improvement.

If you are in a leadership position in your organizations encourage your people to implement change with the best information they have and don’t punish valid, risk managed, decisions. If you support your staff to make informed (but not perfectly informed) decisions some will be wrong and some will be right but you will be moving forward. Waiting for perfection stalls you in your tracks.

Adam has more than twenty years of experience in senior executive roles with global and Australian organizations. A natural strategist, he has a developed a deep knowledge of customer, financial and data analysis.

As the owner of Genroe, Adam is responsible for all aspects of the business. Founded in 2002 Genroe’s core deliverables are in the areas of customer feedback management and customer experience management. Genroe has helped business to business and business to consumer organisations to better understand and generate higher value from their customers.

Adam is widely respected on the international and domestic speaking circuit for his expertise in customer strategy, Net Promoter®, customer feedback management, data analysis and customer-driven financial modelling. He holds an Honours Degree in Mechanical Engineering, as well as an MBA from the Macquarie Graduate School of Management.

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The post Inventory Management: Is Reshoring US Manufacturing the Answer? appeared first on shmula.

We’re pleased to have David Hutchinson provide this op-ed article on his thoughts about trend of Reshoring US Manufacturing. David is the founder and CEO of Symbiant Technologies, a solution provider in the inventory management sector. Learn more about David after the article.

Lean isn’t a destination for distributors, it’s a journey. The reshoring trend is a huge part of creating a lean supply chain, and creates the foundation of lean inventory management.

More U.S. based companies are bringing manufacturing back to the states or the North American region for a variety of reasons. First, distributors are tired of dealing with long lead times waiting for products to travel from Far East suppliers and its effect on their inventory management. Second, there’s the risk of a breach of intellectual property rights ¹ if products that are sourced to other countries are reproduced under an off-brand label. Third, the savings from lower wages in foreign countries are no longer standard as wage rates increase nationally ².

Bringing production back to the U.S. can offset these risks. Lead times are already long when dealing with overseas suppliers, but add in weather setbacks, product abnormalities, port strikes, customs issues or transportation disasters and these disruptions threaten your inventory management.

These days, it’s taking even longer to ship finished products. Lisa Ellram, a professor who specializes in supply chain management, tells the Associated Press that in order to conserve fuel, cargo ships have reduced their speed by 20 percent ³. That means it takes an extra four or five days for a container ship to travel from China to the U.S.

Using international suppliers today is like getting trapped in quicksand: it was easy to jump in with both feet because of the allure of cost savings, but it’s hard or impossible for a supplier to get back out because they’ll never recoup their capital.

Regionally-based supply chains condense lead times and promise products that are delivered consistently and of a higher quality. Plus, in many cases, distributors will receive tax incentives for producing them in America.

Yes, reshoring can mean significant savings for distributors.

Distributors’ inventory management is best-served by regional centers. Distributors don’t need to mass-order products when the supplier is nearby. High-volume items will be moving continually through the system with an automatic reorder made possible thanks to warehouse inventory software ⁴. Items with a lower level of demand can be stocked in smaller quantities with no worry of the product running out or becoming obsolete because distributors can stock quickly in small amounts with a local supplier.

The demand for U.S. goods is on the rise. A survey last year from ThomasNet found that 95 percent of manufacturers plan to buy more from domestic companies ⁵ or keep purchases at the same level as 2011.

Warehouse inventory software also allows distributors to ship “just in time,” an option many customers are demanding these days. More companies are adopting the Amazon model and trying not to have to stock product, instead shipping directly from the manufacturer. The manufacturer fulfills the order, carries the inventory and handles all the risk while the distributor acts as the risk-free middleman by just monitoring the virtual warehouse and handling invoicing. The Amazon model frees up capital for the distributor while still allowing them to gain margins from a variety of products with a limited pass through.

Warehouse inventory software is the key for this new era of distribution. By using warehouse inventory software, distributors can process, track and sort their inventory from a variety of manufacturers. Especially for mid-tier or smaller companies, only warehouse inventory software can handle such unique system requirements at an affordable price tag.

But distributors need to beware of making the mistake of thinking they are lean just by reshoring. Lean is all about eliminating waste, eliminating anything that doesn’t provide value to the end customer and mastering a waste process that doesn’t add additional cost. If you receive a product, unpack it, shelve it, relabel it and ship it again, is that really providing value to the end customer? Or are you just creating additional steps?

Once operations are on the same continent, distributors should then focus on creating an efficient warehouse. They can minimize routes for picking and reduce the amount of times a product is handled.

David Hutchinson is the CEO and co-founder of Symbiant Technologies. He has over 25 years of experience implementing ERP and technology systems in both public and private sector organizations. He has received several awards, including the Richard Drew award for Creative Thinking by 3M Corporation.

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The post Boeing Factory Tour [video] appeared first on shmula.

If you’ve ever wanted to see how airplanes are made, here’s an interesting video of the Boeing Factory Tour.

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The post Ben and Jerry’s Factory Tour [video] appeared first on shmula.

Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream is a pretty fascinating organization. Not only do they make great tasting ice cream, but they sincerely care about the customer. Case in point: when customers write Ben and Jerry’s with a complaint, the customer is invited to their Waterbury, Vermont factory for a Ben and Jerry’s Factory Tour. This is both a gesture of goodwill and also one of education – teaching customers how ice cream is made and how much love Ben and Jerry’s put into their ice cream manufacturing.

So, you want to learn how ice cream is made? Watch the video below. As you do so, look out for the following:

• How does Ben and Jerry’s use visual management?
• Do you see evidence of Kanban?

Enjoy.

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The post Gibson Factory Tour [video] appeared first on shmula.

I live in Nashville, but I still haven’t been on a Gibson Factory Tour. Thankfully, there’s a video available to see how guitars are made. I have to tell you, when I was younger, I played a lot of guitar – I had a nice Ibanez with a Crate half stack amp. So fun. Well, I still play a little – I have a nice Yamaha acoustic and I enjoy it. But, after seeing this video, it made me want a Gibson Les Paul, for sure.

The video highlights are below:

1. Wood is cut for body blanks
2. Wood is sanded for imperfections and pneumatically clamped
3. The tops are cut – book matched maple
4. The top is then cut into the shape of the guitar
5. They demonstrate the routers used to cut the Gibson SG body
6. They discuss what they do to reduce setup times (single minute exchange of dies – SMED)
7. Gibson uses RFID and places one on each guitar. This helps them determine which factory the guitar was made, for warranty reasons and also for inventory control
8. Gibson Guitars is known for their “binding” process, which is the process of bonding the top and back to the body with the use of glue and leather straps
9. Gibson emphasizes that they use “old world” methods, which is what Gibson is known for. It’s more work, but each guitar is handmade.
10. They describe the scraping and finishing process. Guitars are hung on carousels where it’s warmer and allows it to cure. Guitars are on carousels for around 4-6 days in order to dry
11. In Quality Control, Gibson shows how finish thickness is checked – too thin, the guitar isn’t durable; too thick, then the guitar won’t have the right acoustics.
12. After finishing, they show how each guitar is handscraped. It’s a very delicate process and their associates are trained and have long tenures
13. Then on to buffing.
14. Then final inspection – scratches are checked as well as other issues on buffing or finishing
15. Then polish, cleaning, and oil before pickups are installed. Here, they describe standardization on how many turns coils are wound on the humbucker.
16. Then on to final installation, then out the door.

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The post Harley Davidson Factory Tour [video] appeared first on shmula.

This video of the Harley Davidson Factory Tour shows how Harley makes motorcycles. Let me know a couple of interesting items that you may want to keep an eye out for as you watch the video.

1. The engine consists of 357 parts.
2. The Harley engine assembly line has 10 workstations.
3. Harley uses a moving line, similar to Toyota in their manufacturing. In the video, they mention that on the line advances every 7.5 minutes. In order to keep up, the operators need to work efficiently. I tried to find an Andon cord on the line, but wasn’t able to see one. 

The rest of the video is interesting. You’ll also see bits of visual management and standard work.

Harley Davidson Factory Tour

You can go to a Harley Factory Tour in person. If you’re interested in that, here are some details:

Harley Davidson Powertrain

Harley Davidson Powertrain Factory Tour
W156 N9000 Pilgrim Road
Menomonee Falls, WI 53051
9AM – 2PM on Monday

Harley Davidson Vehicle Operations

Harley Davidson Vehicle Operations
1425 Eden Road
York, PA 17402
9AM – 2PM Monday to Friday

Harley Davidson Vehicle and Powertrain Factory Tour

Harley Davidson Vehicle and Powertrain Factory Tour
11401 N Congress Ave.
Kansas City, MO 64153
9AM – 1:30PM Monday to Friday

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The post Heinz Factory Tour [video] appeared first on shmula.

Who hasn’t heard of Heinz? Yeah, that’s what I thought. They have been around for over 100 years and are an American icon – the ketchup is just as much American as apple pie. This Heinz Factory Tour shows you how they pick tomatoes and how they manufacture products such as their famous ketchup and also spaghetti sauce.

In the first video, you’ll learn a little bit of history – the Heinz perspective on agriculture to the philosophy of continuous flow, which they adopted soon after they began manufacturing ketchup. The first video also shows the overall supply chain from the tomato to manufacturing to fulfillment and distribution to the delivery of the finished goods to the store shelves and then finally to the kitchen table.

According to the video, the Heinz distribution model pioneered the direct to store fulfillment. I’m not sure about that, but the video is interesting and educational. Be warned, however, the video is a little old. Be patient with it – it’s interesting.

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The post Hershey Factory Tour [video] appeared first on shmula.

For all you chocolate lovers out there, today we present a video of the Hershey Factory Tour.

In this video, the narrator begins with the harvesting of cacao and follows cacao through manufacturing and then fulfillment of the finished chocolate product to the store.

Hershey Factory Tour

The post Hershey Factory Tour [video] appeared first on shmula.

I’m not really into cars, but I love learning about how cars are manufactured. The corvette is an American icon and, like you I’m sure, I’m interested in learning how the chevrolet corvette is made.

Luckily for us, if you’re not able to go to the Bowling Green Factory in Kentucky, the only factory where chevrolet corvettes are made, there’s always Youtube where you can see a video of how chevrolet makes the famous corvette.

Corvette Tour Information

The factory location is at: 600 Corvette Dr, Bowling Green KY 42101

You can schedule a tour reservation, up to 365 days in advance. If you have any questions you can contact the folks at the factory by calling (270) 745-8019 Monday through Friday 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

You are only allowed to schedule a maximum of 75 people for the private tours. You can schedule a tour of more than 75 people, but you’ll just need to call and schedule with the folks there. Oh, there’s a small tour fee of $7 per person.

About the Corvette Factory Tour

If you are able to visit the corvette factory, here’s what you can expect to see:

Watch the fascinating assembly process of America’s favorite sports car, the Chevrolet Corvette, in a one mile walking tour. Observe as robots weld the steel structure and our dedicated workforce adds parts in Trim and Chassis. See an engineering marvel as the chassis and body come together in “marriage.” Witness the birth of new Corvettes at First Start and the thrilling drive off the end of the line. We are a handicapped accessible facility.

History of the Factory

Here are some basic statistics on the factory:

There are a total of 514 employees, 413 of which are hourly and 101 are salaried. The Local Union is UAW Local 2164. At this factory, they manufacture the following corvette models:

• Chevrolet Corvette – Base Coupe
• Base Convertible
• Grand Sport Coupe
• Grand Sport Convertible
• Z06
• ZR1
• Z07

The factory is roughly 1 Million Square Feet, located on a 212 acres. It opened in 1981. Here are a few recent investments chevrolet made in the factory:

• 7/07; $4,500,000 for conveyor addition/rearrangement
• 2005; $5,000,000 for Andon/global error proofing
• 2005; $12,000,000 for ELPO paint system
• 4/05; $19,000,000 for C6 model change
• 4/05; $3,000,000 for paint sludge system/air balance

Assembly Process Pictures

Below are a few pictures of the corvette assembly process that you’ll find interesting.

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Developing Customer Personas are a critical step in building  Customer Journey Maps. Keeping in mind the purpose of the exercise is key: We develop customer journey maps in order to gain empathy for the customer, learn what they actually go through versus what we think they go through, identify the steps as well as the emotional component as they walk the journey. We do all of this so that we can improve the customer experience and to also innovate on service or on product design.

But, an important step in developing Customer Journey Maps is to first gain an understand of who the customer is.

What is a Customer Persona

Without probably even realizing it, you have uttered phrases that come from the field of customer personas. Reflect on these statements:

1. “soccer mom”
2. “ophrah book club member”
3. “jerry springer audience”

These phrases describe a fictional character but represents a broad array of actual people or customers. These customer markers become a single and identifiable fictional character across a company. They work well because they are convenient and also descriptive.

How To Create Customer Personas

There are various ways to develop customer personas. Here are a few approaches:

• Use existing segmentation and demographic data obtained from internal or market resources (primary or secondary research).
• Use any existing survey data that tell us something about customer needs, desires, wants, pain points, preferences, etc.
• Use any qualitative or focus group data that tell us something about customer goals, hobbies, what makes them happy, what makes them upset, books or magazines they read, or other psychographic data.
• In general, we want behavioral segments and attitudinal segments that tell us much more about the group of customers we’re attempting to describe.

Customer Personas is not Customer Segmentation

Traditional market research customer segmentation allows us to “bucketize” a group based on variables such as age, income, purchase patterns, etc. Customer Segmentation tells us that a discrete and unique group exists, but segmentation doesn’t tell us the qualitative aspects of that group. That’s where Customer Personas become helpful.

Customer Personas Help Us Understand Intangible Aspects

Some intangible aspects that customer personas help us understand are the following:

• Who the Customer is: What are the demographics, attitudes, lifestyle, and behavior?
• What are Customer Pain Points: Problems, complaints, dissatisfiers.
• What are Customer Triggers: Identify events, special occasions, where her engagement with the company, service, or product begin and why.
• What are the Needs of the Customer: Here we’re interested in the emotional needs – what the customer needs versus what they receive from the product, service, or company. I’m not speaking about functional needs – I’m focused here on the emotional aspect. For example, in calling customer service, the customer might want relief, but instead the customer receives more anxiety from the company. That sort of intangible aspect is key in this type of work.

There are other items, but in general this is the general approach and how customer personas can be helpful to us.

Develop Customer Personas to Create Customer Journey Maps

Customer personas will have a finite set of elements that describe them. Here are some, typically in a form of a customer narrative or story. Suppose there are 5 customer pesonas your company has identified. Each one can have the following elements:

1. Fictional Character Name: descriptive name that describes gender and activity. “Soccer Mom” is an example.
2. Age
3. Perhaps a customer quote that describes the fictional character in general. For example, suppose a persona is a college student, member of fraternity, and drinks on the weekends. His quote might be “I try to coast through class; can’t wait for the weekend to hang with my buddies and feel part of a family”.
4. A customer narrative, in the form of a story showing goals, needs, and general attitude. Pain points and preferences are also important here.

Once customer personas are developed, we can then use them to do the following:

1. Take Each Customer Persona Through Scenarios

You can take a given customer persona through a scenario. For example, suppose “soccer mom” was a customer persona and the company or service she’s engaged with is an automotive company that makes minivans. One scenario is:

• Wake up early on Saturday morning
• Make sure kids are fed and dressed in soccer uniforms
• Get in the van in time to drive to game
• Make sure to bring snacks for the other kids, water, and lawn chairs for the game
• Don’t forget sunscreen and sunglasses
• Drive to game
• Park, get out of van, hold kids hands, walk to field
• Find spot, unfold lawn chairs, set up camp
• Watch game
• etc…

This scenario and the persona combine to create a customer journey map showing the steps, pain points, and also the emotional aspects. What I shared with the soccer mom are just the steps, but what the customer journey map will show are the emotional aspects of the soccer mom’s journey. For example, while the soccer mom finds parking, she might feel anxious about being late, parking too far from the field, and maybe concerned that the van is too wide to be able to park in a standard parking space. These emotional aspects matter.

2. Take Each Scenario and Map the Steps

3. On Each Main Step, Gauge the Personas happiness level

This one of the main parts of the journey. This can be done with a Mood Wheel or with a simple thermometer scale with one side as happy and the other side not happy, or a combination of other variables that matter for your particular study.

Conclusion

Customer Personas can be a very helpful tool to better understand the customer. Using it in combination with Customer Journey Maps leads to a very effective approach to improve the customer experience and to innovate on their behalf.

The post Developing Customer Personas To Create Customer Journey Maps appeared first on shmula.

Have you ever experienced an odd customer service moment? That was a trick question – of course you have. We all have. And, I just experience one yesterday. So, I’m naming this article “Customer Service Awkward Moments: Live Human is Busy”. Let me explain.

I was on a site yesterday and I had a question about a product they were selling. I wasn’t interested in calling customer service, waiting, then wait some more, and then enter their IVR, then get transferred to an agent, and then get transferred to another agent and in the course of getting transferred, have the call disconnected. Not interested in that. But what happens next was both funny and instructive.

Live Human is Busy

So, I opted to try the site’s chat client. I hit on the “chat” button, hoping to get connected to someone that can help, but this is what I was presented with instead:

I had to take a double take. Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing? Really? An attractive female agent with the words “Live Human is Busy. Click Here to Leave a Message” overlaid on top of her face. From this experience I draw a few lessons-learned:

1. Make the Service Unclickable

If chat is not available, then it’s important that the chat button be grayed out and unclickable. Perhaps replace the button with text indicating it’s not available or when it might be available. Making the customer click “chat” only to be told chat is not available is a waste of the customer’s time and doesn’t engender good feelings, just frustration.

2. Use Normal, Everyday English

Have you ever, in your life, ever said “live human is busy”? It’s a very strange phrase indeed. People just don’t talk like that. If a service is unavailable, then it’s important that any website copy or message rendered to the customer is friendly, helps them feel like it’s not their fault, and website content that connects with the customer.

Instead, I laughed. Humor is good, but I don’t think this company meant for their message to be funny. And, it clearly didn’t connect with me. Look at me – I’m writing about it – about what NOT to do. That’s not the outcome any company would want.

3. Don’t Ask for a Message

I had a question – this much is true. But, I’m not interested in leaving a message. In fact, having a questions puts me inside the sales funnel. That means I’m close to buying. So, for customers like me, I need to have my question answered or be told something that will invite me to come back. Something like

Hey, we’re sorry but our chat agents aren’t available right now. But, if you come back at (day, time) then we’d be happy to answer your question then. In the meantime, continue shopping. We’re sure you’ll find something you like

Okay, the website copy I propose is long, but (1) it’s friendly, (2) it invites the customer back at a specific day and time, (3) and projects confidence in the customer that she or he will find something they would want to buy and it projects confidence in the company that the actually have something valuable to sell.

You get the point.

Look Alive, Steven

That quote is from Nacho Libre – if you don’t get the inside joke, then just move on and pretend I didn’t even say it.

So, in your attempts to connect with the customer today, think hard and deep about actually connecting. When you do, you’ll find many small and important nuggets of items you can change to improve how you’re running your business. Who knows, maybe connecting with customers might even lead to company and revenue growth. You’ll have to decide that one.

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Domino’s Pizza Tracker Process – A Behind the Scenes Look at what actually happens in the Domino’s Pizza Kitchen and how the steps in the kitchen connects to the steps in the Pizza Tracker – the tool the customer interacts with.

If you’ve been reading Shmula for some time, you know my unusual appreciation for “Where’s My Stuff” Visual Management. Well, much has been written about Domino’s Pizza Tracker. And while the customer-facing aspect of the Pizza Tracker is interesting, I was able to capture a rare look at what happens behind the scenes and how each step behind the scenes corresponds with the Pizza Tracker the customer sees on the Domino’s website.

It turns out that what happens in Domino’s kitchen is not that novel, but it works just fine. Nevertheless, the customer-facing side is what the customer sees and what they experience. If the back-end of the process is dirty, nasty, and not all that interesting, it’s a good thing the customer is encapsulated from that.

Let’s see what the Domino’s Pizza Tracker looks like behind the scenes. But first, a reminder on what the customer sees.

Here’s the behind the scenes look at Domino’s Pizza Tracker.

Order Placed

Step 1: Order Capture

An order arrives on a small vintage computer screen. The Domino’s employee views the order and begins the process of manufacturing the pizza.

Prep

Step 2: Pizza Manufacturing

Dough

The Dough is made fresh in the morning and is prepared as a batch – that is, based on expected production volume, Domino’s prepares a set number of Dough balls and then keeps them fresh by covering them in Saran Wrap and placed in the refrigerator. At point of order, a dough ball is then flattened for pizza making.

Sauce

Once the dough ball is flattened, the Domino’s worker uses a scoring tool to place divots into the dough. The little marks on the dough allows the tomato sauce to adhere to the pizza dough.

Cheese and Other Ingredients

The White contraption you see in the picture is a measuring and spreading tool for cheese – it accurately holds the specified amount of cheese for the pizza size and then it is spun to spread the cheese evenly over the pizza. This process is semi-automated, which means the tool does most of the work and the employee just has to put the cheese into the white cheese measuring tool and spreader.

Bake

Pizza is placed in the oven. As the pizza is placed, the Domino’s employee starts a timer. The timer is critical because it tells the Pizza Tracker that the “Prep” step is complete, but it also signals the Tracker that the customer’s order is now in the “Bake” step.

The oven below is hard to see, but there’s a large moving horizontal oven below. The pizza is placed at the beginning and it rolls toward the right. As the pizza moves toward the right and exits the oven, the timer is then triggered and that tells the Pizza Tracker that the “Bake” step is complete and now the customer’s order is in the “Box” step.

Box

Pizza to Box Matching Process

When the pizza rolls off the oven, it is placed in a box that with the customer’s order label on it. This part of the process matches the customer’s pizza with the correct box with the customer’s information on it. This process follows a one-piece flow approach: take a pizza, put a pizza. By doing a single piece flow approach to pizza to box matching, the chances of pizza switcheroo defects are lower (a customer get’s another customer’s order).

Pizza Packing

At this step, the Domino’s employee walks to the rack, places the pizza to the correct box. Once the pizza is packed, it waits for driver to pick up the pizza for delivery.

Delivery

Do you see the label maker toward the bottom of the rack? When the label is printed, that’s the signal to the Pizza Tracker that the customer’s order is no in the “Delivery” state.

Here’s a picture of the labels up close so you can see how pizzas are matched to the correct customer box. Let me explain each of the numbers in the label.

• 349041 is my order number
• 2/2 means that this is Box 2 of 2, which means there should be a Box 1 of 2 also, which completes the customer’s order.
• The letter “C” means Carry Out.
• The timestamp of when the customer’s order arrived and this is used to track average time to make a pizza, as well as the overall order arrival to pizza delivered process.
• Toward the bottom is the customer’s Name.

If there are other items in the order besides pizza, the box label will capture that also. This customer, for example, ordered Sprite with their 2 pizzas.

Looking at the Customer view of the pizza tracker and what actually happens behind the scenes in the kitchen of Domino’s pizza can give us a fuller picture of what it takes to deliver good service and how the Pizza Tracker is successful in the eyes of the customer. While the back-end process is nothing new, novel, or innovative, the way the status is portrayed to the customer – the interface – is the novel and innovated part of the process.

This is more than just lipstick on a pig – in many ways, the pizza tracker is the product because that is what the customer interacts with.

Fascinating. Are you hungry yet?

The post Where’s My Pizza? Behind The Scenes at Domino’s Pizza Tracker appeared first on shmula.

Among other philosophical questions you’ve pondered, I’m sure you’ve also asked yourself “How to Game the Net Promoter Score?”. Well, I’m here to answer that question for you. How to apply an effective net promoter score program is a topic for a different day.

As more and more companies adopt the Net Promoter Score, I’m seeing various ways in which the Net Promoter Program has been implemented. For some of those implementations, it is accurate to say that the implementation of the program enables some gaming or hacking of the actual NPS score. In what follows, I’m going to highlight various misguided and faulty implementations of the Net Promoter Program that leads to an unhealthy focus on the score itself and, even, gaming of the NPS to make the score what the firm wants it to be, rather than a reflection of actual customer sentiment or loyalty.

Only Survey Customers

The Net Promoter Score measures loyalty to a service, product, but also to the brand. This is why the NPS in a properly implemented NPS Program also surveys respondents who are not customers. For example, have you ever visited a website while you are NOT logged in and are invited to take an NPS survey? The shear fact that you’re not logged in means the company doesn’t who you are, yet they want to know if you would be interested in taking their NPS survey. In this situation, what is being measured is affinity  toward the brand and overall sentiment to the brand or, rather, the perception that respondent has for the brand in question.

Only Survey Happy Customers

As a corollary to the first, survey only happy customers. If you survey only customers with the highest likelihood of being happy and satisfied, then your NPS will be high. In this scenario, it will be to your advantage to increase your response rate, as to get more happy customers responding to the NPS survey, further inflating the NPS.

Keep NPS Survey Response Rates Low

The NPS Score is inversely correlated with Survey Response Rates. Why? Research has shown that customers who were surveyed but did not respond, behaved more like Passives or Detractors. If more and more of the “surveyed but did not respond” population begin to respond, then you can expect your NPS Score to decline. And because our motivation is to game the NPS Score to make it what we want and not have it reflect customer sentiment, we obviously don’t want this situation.

As a natural byproduct of the strategies described above, your response rates will be low. That’s okay. This means that your NPS will have the greatest likelihood of being high. The downside? Well, this improper implementation of the NPS Program means you actually won’t be collecting broad or big picture customer sentiment. The selection bias will be astronomically and statistically ridiculous. But, that’s okay. By keeping NPS Survey response rates low will most likely result in a higher NPS score, which is a really good way to game the NPS.

In All Seriousness

The above strategies are how some companies have implemented their NPS Program. I don’t believe the companies were deliberate in their gaming of the NPS, just misguided. Nevertheless, this leads to inflation of the NPS, making it impossible to do apples to apples comparisons of the NPS scores between industries or competitors.

An appropriate and proper implementation of the NPS Program (score only, not the Feedback Loop portion) is described below:

Implementing the NPS Program such that the broadest cross-section of your audience is surveyed and collected will ensure that the NPS will more likely be an accurate reflection of customer sentiment. To do so, it’s suggested that:

• Survey Non Customers
• Survey Customers with no transactions
• Survey Customers with transactions

By surveying customers with transactions, customer with no transactions, and non customers but interact with your service or product or brand, you’ll be able to investigate the stratification of Promoter, Detractor, and Passive among the cross-sections of the respondents to give you a more accurate NPS and a Net Promoter Score that is not hacked, gamed, or manipulated.

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Recently, Andrew Smart, a Human Factors Scientist, makes an entertaining case against Six Sigma ¹. He claims that Six Sigma drains employees’ creativity. He makes an interesting case that is both entertaining and riddled with fallacies. While I agree with him on several points, I want to point out where I believe he’s wrong.

Misguided Definitions Lead to Straw Man Arguments

Andrew begins by setting forth several definitions of Six Sigma but he begins with this one:

According to an official account, Six Sigma is an organized and systematic method for strategic process improvement, plus new product and service development, that relies on statistical methods and the scientific method to make dramatic reductions in customer-defined defect rates.

It is broadly understood and agreed by those in the Six Sigma community that the first part of the definition is correct. Six Sigma was meant to reduce variation in manufacturing initially. In other words, if we’re going to pump out 1 million widgets, it makes sense that they are all roughly the same. If there’s wide variation between widgets, then the customer will not be happy.

From its roots in manufacturing, Six Sigma then spread to other parts of the organization, such as transactional processes.

Up to this point, Andrew is characterizing Six Sigma somewhat accurately. But then, he goes wrong in the second part of the definition above: Six Sigma was not meant to be used to develop new products or in new service design.

I don’t know how he justifies that claim, but it’s widely understood that Six Sigma is not meant to be used to develop new service lines or even new products. Six Sigma is meant to improve the process of already existing products or already existing services.

Regardless, Andrew Smart uses the definition to support the rest of his story. But from here on, it’s built on a straw man – an uncharitable characterization.

Knock Down a Straw Man with an Unrelated Analogy

Andrew then continues with the following claim:

The single most important goal of the Six Sigma is to reduce varia­tion in organizational processes by using disease vectors to spread throughout the company. These vectors are improve­ment specialists, a structured method, and performance metrics.

He’s not far off. Variation in high volume production is not good. Imagine producing 1000 Diet Coke’s and having each one actually taste different. Imagine if there was no Diet Coke standard taste? Would the customer appreciate that?

At this point, Andrew begins to bring in a false analogy, by relating Six Sigma to epileptic seizures:

This is similar to what the underlying disease in epilepsy does to neurons. During a seizure, the variations in the neurons are reduced. Reducing variation in the brain is devastating.

Applied to an entire company, the Six Sigma process is analogous to an organizational epileptic seizure.

This is entertaining prose, but the analogy is a false one. I don’t see how he makes the logical leap from variation to epileptic seizures. As a father of a son who has seizures, I can tell you that seizures are frightening and definitely not a good thing.

Andrew uses the analogy to both entertain and make a point: He’s equating variation with the context of Six Sigma and variation in the context of neuroscience as the same. This is where Andrew is dead wrong. They are two different types of variation.

Variation in the context of Six Sigma has to do with repeatable and reproducible processes. Think of my Diet Coke example. Think of making widgets.

Variation in the context of Neuroscience has to do with characteristics that determine one’s personality, behavior, propensity, interests, talents, and the like. Variation in this context has to do with Variety of experiences that shape our brain and help us learn. Our brains learn from differences. If we remove variation in this context, we essentially become robots, devoid of life. Kind of like a Zombie, except not a very fun or interesting Zombie. A really boring Zombie.

Anyway, Andrew equivocates a little bit here by equating Variation with Variety. Both are important and appropriate in the right context. Andrew just happens to equivocate one for the other and in the wrong context.

A False Dichotomy is a Sign of a Weak Argument

After Andrew’s seizure discussion, he commits a false dichotomy – the one that is characteristic of the Dark Side in Star Wars. Remember when Obi Wan tells Luke Skywalker that “Only the Sith deal in absolutes”? Well Andrew commits that when he said:

Capitalist corporations must execute a strange balancing act between two poles on a spectrum that are paradoxical. On the one hand, they must work to the shareholders’ immediate benefit—hence Six Sigma. On the other hand, they need ideas for innovative products. Both these contradictory elements are required for the elusive “competitive advantage.”

By setting up his argument that on one end is Six Sigma and on the other end of the spectrum is innovation and creativity, he has become a Sith Lord of his own making. While it’s true that Six Sigma is only meant to improve currently existing processes, it always requires creativity to improve a process. Some of the best and ingenious innovations I’ve seen came out of solving a problem using a systematic methodology like Six Sigma.

And, oh, the Epilepsy Foundation of Wisconsin feels the same way about Andrew’s false analogy:

What the Brain Needs

The remaining section in Andrew’s article are good and I agree with most of it. He talks about how the brain physiologically learns and changes based on our experiences. He essentially explains what makes us human. He does delve into employee surveys and how most employees don’t like “process”. I can understand that.

What’s Worse than Six Sigma

Andrew misses hugely on an opportunity to address the one business practice that deserves a tirade – Command and Control Management. In academic circles, this is sometimes referred to as Taylorism, referring to Frederick Taylor, the father of Scientific Management.

Now Taylorism deserves a serious smack down. This is the business practice of measuring everything – every step, second, this and that. This is the business practice that reduces humans to “operators” that only push widgets and were born to punch a clock at the beginning of shift and at the end of their shift. Taylorism fails to recognize the individual talents, creativity, and uniqueness of each human. Instead, Taylorism forces others to follow, think the same way, and also implements stiff penalties for dissent.

Andrew thinks that Six Sigma drains creativity from humans?

I’ll bet a Star Wars DVD Boxed Set that Command and Control management stemming from Frederick Taylor is way worse.

The post If Six Sigma Drains Employees’ Creativity, This Business Practice Has it Beat appeared first on shmula.

This video shows the efforts made to implement Lean at Saskatchewan Children’s Hospital. What is so great about this video is that it shows the people involved, how they felt about Lean, how involved they were, and even showed specific artifacts and efforts from their implementation of Lean.

For example, you’ll see the following:

• Root Cause Analysis work done by nurses, staff, and physicians
• Discussion on layout to tackle the waste of transportation – to reduce the significant walk time done by nurses and staff.
• 5S work in hospital supplies in order to improve patient care and reduce medical errors.

What I love the most is the increase in communication and the broad involvement of all the staff. Their lean transformation wasn’t isolated to a few “belts” or individuals but was broad – which is how a proper lean transformation ought to be.

You’ll see more. Watch the video and see what you can learn from their lean transformation that you can begin to apply today.

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It’s not a surprise that most call centers are very cost focused and not completely customer focused. There’s an upside and a downside to this approach: on the one hand, call centers are traditionally “cost centers” – that is, they don’t provide revenue for the firm. From this perspective, it’s important that cost be contained and even reduced. On the other hand, the call center can become a differentiator in the marketplace, where customer loyalty is harder and harder to come by.

How does one balance cost and customer satisfaction in the call center?

Not All Calls Are Created Equal

Not all customer queries into the call center are created equal. Some calls have a net negative to the firm’s bottom line, while others might initially be a cost, but then transition to a potential sale and hence revenue for the company.

The challenge is in categorizing the calls and mapping them to the revenue the firm brings in. By doing this, it provides clarity on which types of calls we can afford to automate, which types of calls we should route to a live agent, and which types of calls can fall into a combination of both.

The chart below shows a possible way of mapping inbound calls into a call center:

There are other ways to categorize inbound contacts into a call center, but this is one easy way that provides clarity and ease.

How To Differentiate

But, we must be careful.

Why?

If Firm A decides that some calls should be automated, that company’s competitor might decide to make those very same type of calls route to a live agent. By doing so, the competitor firm is differentiating itself by providing a high touchpoint service agains its competitor who is routing to a live agent. And, we know, that most customers literally hate most automated channels – such an IVR, etc.

Self-Service is Self-Serving

Most self-service approaches taken by companies are an attempt at reducing cost. Let’s face it – sending a customer to the IVR or to the Web Channel is cheaper than if a live agent handled that call.

But, just because most companies are doing this doesn’t mean it’s good for the customer. In fact, it is likely that this approach is bad for the customer.

What’s needed is a way to categorize and determine the trade-off between inbound call center contacts so that the company can make wiser and more balanced decisions, instead of only cost reasons.

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Or Any Change Management Program

[Click to Tweet This Article]

Noah is the founder of a company called AppSumo, which is kind of like Groupon but focused on entrepreneurs – tools entrepreneurs need to start businesses. I signed up a while ago and I get emails from them occasionally. This article deconstructs an email I received from Noah recently and what that simple email and the landingpage it points to can teach us about leading change initiatives or change management programs and lean transformations.

Most of my audience here have never heard the name Noah Kagan. I actually hadn’t either until I looked him up. It turns out he’s a former Facebook employee – one of the first. So, he knows something about starting businesses and such. His Facebook past doesn’t matter really; what matters is what he is up to now and what we can learn from his approach to marketing – what principles we can glean from his marketing email that may be helpful to those leading Lean Transformations.

The AppSumo Email

When I woke up on August 28, 2013 I opened up my inbox and saw the AppSumo email. The subject line caught my attention right away:

What I learned from a McDonald’s Manager

It’s a curious subject line. It accomplished it’s purpose. I became curious enough to open the email instead of throwing it in the trash. I then noticed that the email was sent at 3:21 AM. Since Noah is a marketing geek, I’m sure he and his team have done a lot of A/B test in order to optimize open rates. Perhaps they concluded that emails sent around 3 AM will lead to the highest likelihood of being opened.

Lesson:

• Create Curiosity: Implement a catchy headline that will create curiousity. This is important for change managers or leaders of lean transformations. To garner interest and eventually support, you must first get and then earn the attention of those impacted by the change.
• Communicate at the Optimal Time: It’s not an accident that the email was sent at 3 AM. What this means from a change management perspective is that we must communicate at times when our audience is most likely to listen to our message.
• Use a Human Face to Build Credibility and Trust: The email contained a photo of Noah. Seeing a human face helped me to feel that this email was less spammy – it made the message more credible. Similarly, for those leading change initiatives inside of organizations, it’s important to remember that before anybody will listen to us, they must first trust the person before they will listen to our message.

The Landingpage

When I clicked through from the email, I landed on the designated landingpage. The first thing that catches my eye is the same picture of Noah Kagan. Below him is a sign stating “Only 200 spots remaining” – indicating sense of urgency for me to act before I lose my spot in the training he’s offering.

Lesson:

• Familiar Feeling and No Surprises: clicking through from an email with a picture of Noah and landing on a web page with the same picture of Noah helped me to understand where I was and that I landed in the place I expected. This created a feeling of familiarity and there were no surprises. For leaders of change programs or lean transformations, there’s a powerful lesson here – we can also create a sense of familiarity and urgency simultaneously. Doing so would help our audience both support and also act on the message we are sharing.
• Create a Sense of Urgency – a Burning Platform: People won’t necessarily act or support a change program unless there’s a burning platform or something that will create a sense of urgency. Otherwise, most people will be fence sitters or worst – saboteurs to your change initiative. It’s critical to create a sense of urgency – a common burning platform everyone can agree on. Otherwise, there will be complacency.

The message next to the image of Noah was this:

How To Make A $1,000 A Month Business

Have you failed at starting a business or failed at trying?

Learn to find the right idea and start a profitable business you’ll enjoy without spending more money. How To Make a $1,000 a Month Business is interactive and designed for action.

In this message, he’s building some empathy and trying to connect with the customer. He’s trying to say “I understand you and your struggles. I’ve got something that can help you”.

Lesson:

• Connect with your audience: Build empathy and emotionally connect with your audience. By doing this, we as change managers can more readily begin at a common point with a common cause with our audience. We are no longer an outsider looking in, but now have become part of them and their struggle. In leading a lean transformation, this is critical – resistance often happens when folks don’t believe that any improvements need to be made. If we begin from a point that is common point of departure or jumping off point and – even – begin with a common cause.

Tell a Story

In the next several sections of the Landingpage, there is story after story of ordinary people and their story. They tell the reader about their initial struggles, what they tried, and how Noah’s program helped them to achieve the goal of making at least $1000 per month. Their stories are interesting and engaging. And again, there is effective use of real people’s faces here – no stock photos. This engenders trust – these are real people not fake models.

Lesson:

• Tell an engaging story: Story telling is an underutilized and under-appreciated skill in business. It is a skill that is especially important in change management because we are trying to change hearts more than we are trying to change minds or business systems.
• Customer Testimonials to build emotional connection: Using real people’s faces and their stories are engaging and creates a sense of “I see myself in them” feeling. Effective change management programs utilize this approach to effectively create emotional connection. Doing so prevents and reduces resistance that comes with any change program.

Trust the Team – We’ve Got Your Back

In most change programs, the question the audience will undoubtedly ask themselves quietly is “Why should I trust You?” In the context of the marketing a new product, the AppSumo landingpage answers this question by showing the picture of the AppSumo team and with a large messaging that says “We’ve Got Your Back”.

Lesson:

• Trust Person, Before Listen to Message: In change management programs, it’s critical to establish trust. People will need to first trust those leading the change program or process improvement efforts before they will listen, support, and participate in the initiative. They need to feel as if someone has their back.

A Final Word

Toward the end of a very long landingpage, there’s the same picture of Noah that we saw at the beginning. Again, this is not an accident. Next to his image is a personal note and an invitation to join his program.

The effect this has is that feeling of trust and familiarity again. It creates an emotional sense of “I’ve seen his picture before” or “I feel like he’s talking to me personally”. That sense creates emotional connection.

Lesson:

• Consistent Message and No Surprises: Whatever we laid out at the beginning of the change management initiative has to be the same message we communicate throughout. By doing this, there are no surprises and our audience will have heard it before and the message will feel familiar.

Answer Questions

As I scrolled down the landingpage, a proactive chat screen popped, inviting me to ask any questions if I had any. This type of helpfulness and accessibility builds even more trust and helps me feel that I’m not alone.

Lesson:

• Answer Questions and be Accessible: with anything new, but especially new programs, new change initiatives, lean transformations, or six sigma deployments, people will have questions. It’s important that those questions are invited and also answered. This simple act builds trust and eventually support.

Conclusion and Final Notes

I took some creative liberty to compare a marketing email to the principles and practices that make for an effective change management program. I think there’s a lot in common and I’ve certainly learned quite a bit from deconstructing Noah Kagan’s email.

Regardless of the marketing email or source of the principles learned, the principles we learn in this article are good for any change management program.

Below is the entire landingpage I deconstructed here. Take a look at it. I’m sure there are elements that I’ve missed that perhaps you might apply to your own initiative.

The post Deconstructing Noah Kagan’s Email and Principles for Leading Lean Enterprise Transformation or Change Initiatives appeared first on shmula.

When the problem itself is the tool we use to describe the problem, then you really have a problem. This is the case with the Rug Doctor Troubleshooting Process Map. Let me explain.

Several weeks ago, Adam Richardson, a writer I follow on Harvard Business Review posted a funny tweet about a problem he had with a Rug Doctor Rented machine.

Apparently, Adam had an issue with a rented upholstery tool. Here’s his tweet:

Out of curiosity, I clicked on the link he posted and found the Rug Doctor Troubleshooting process map. What I found was a very troubled process map – yes. Now, when the problem is the tool that you are using to describe the situation or problem is, itself, the problem, then it’ll be very difficult to fix the initial and original problem. This highlights the importance of effectively and properly using problem solving tools. If applied incorrectly, then we’ll be missing the mark and we’ll either do one of the following:

• We’ll conclude that the tool itself was flawed.
• We’ll conclude that we’re not smart enough to solve the problem.

Do you see the issue? Neither of the options above are correct. The problem is really in our implementation of the problem solving tool. Fix that, then what we have is clarity, allowing us to properly diagnose, assess, and eventually solve the problem.

In this specific case, we are able to more accurately fix the Rug Doctor upholstery problem.

Here’s my video explanation of how to improve the Rug Doctor’s process map. With the inclusion of just a few steps, the map can be improved significantlyl

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Yes, the title is a bit dramatic. But, I’m trying to make a point as well as liberally applying some creativity to my copywriting. So, what is the one skill you need to solve any problem but aren’t using?

Empathy.

Let me explain.

Empathy is at the heart of what it means to be a human. And, since we’re solving problems – problems that humans have in the context of their lives – it’s important that we exercise empathy in the act of problem solving.

In the context of lean and process excellence, Empathy can be understood as Genchi Genbutsu, which means “Go and See”. Specifically, here are the actionable steps as we apply empathy in the act of problem solving.

Observe

Without judgment, we want to observe customers in the context of their lives. We want to see them interacting with the service, product, or process for which they are experiencing problems. Here are some questions we want to have top of mind as we observe.

1. What is the customer’s behavior in the problem context?
2. What do they do?
3. What do they say?
4. What gestures do they perform when they are frustrated or upset?
5. How often does the problem occur and what typical reactions does the customer have when it happens?

Interact

Now that we have a sense of what the user goes through, it’s important we actually ask them. When we interact with our customers and users, we can learn the following:

1. Who are our users and what is important to them?
2. What do they need?
3. How do they want to feel as they interact with the process, product, or service?

Go to the Gemba

Taiichi Ohno taught that we should experience things for ourselves and not rely on excel spreadsheets or reports from others. Experiencing first hand is the epitome of empathy and without doing that, our solutions may not be solving the problem. In simple terms, we must experience what our customers and users experience. This context gives us a deeper sense of what the problem really is, how it makes us feel (and our customers feel) and also allows us to brainstorm effective and innovative solutions that actually solve the problem.

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