The process is over only when the customer says it is.

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Are your processes bounded by the myopia of the organization? 
For instance Procure to Pay,   Order to Cash, Prospect to Customer and so on? 
If so you are in danger of fixing things and doing things right, rather than identifying what you should be doing and doing the Right things.

  The customer experience is the process. Does that work in your organization?

Technology is the means to the end, not the end in itself. It is just the same with pen and paper.

We are all citizens of the Information Age. Fifty years ago the first mainframes were being

deployed and provided us with a fantastic way to automate processes. Unfortunately the industrial age mindset prevailed and we now often have the tail wagging the dog. The technology dictating how we do business rather than the real needs of the customer.

Break out of the left to right, top down, linear straightjacket and create solutions that deliver customer success. After all technology is just todays pen and paper.
Is technology constraining your ability to change?
Does technology slow innovation in your company?
Return to the basics and figure out if it is really contributing, if not scrap it.

If things are changing faster outside than in, you will fail.

Sound obvious but is it really. How do you set about improving your business? Continually improving what you are doing, analyzing, leaning and removing variance? Oops. They say the road to hell is paved with good intention and so it with organizations working hard at the wrong things.

You need to go out and figure what the Successful Customer Outcomes (SCO’s) look like, then come back into your business and ensure everything you are doing aligns with that SCO.

Otherwise you can end up like RIM, Nokia, Kodak and so many other once famous brands now in terminal decline.

What is the balance in your organization. Have SCO’s been clearly articulated and do you know how your work explicitly contributes to them?

The Customer Experience is the process.

Where do your processes start and end?
Procure to Pay? Enquiry to Invoice? If so you are in the wrong place.

Where does the process really start, and end. It certainly isn’t contained by our functional specialist silo’s. You have to go out to the customer need and finish with the successful delivery.

How do you define process start and end? Is that really complete?

To link process with performance we need to rethink what we mean by performance.

How do you measure performance? Is it via the task, activities and outputs your organization achieves? Think about the call center for instance. The number of calls answered, processed and dealt with. Wrong.

Performance should be measured directly by the Outcomes and Results that are achieved. Stop measuring success by number of calls dealt with in 180 seconds and instead ask yourself did we deliver a Successful Customer Outcome?

Look at the Key Performance Indicators. How many measure how much to those that measure what was achieved?

Process is just another name for the work we do.

You have to like those folks who do not understand this. Everything that takes place in the

organization is part of a process. Marketing, Strategy, IT it is all the same thing. 

Knowing this is fundamental to an organizations success.

Linking everything we do though to the Successful Customer Outcome is all that we should be doing. If it doesn’t contribute to the Successful Customer Outcome then stop doing it.

How can you share this insight with your colleagues?

We shouldn’t keep looking back at the past to define the possibilities for the future.

When great change happens new thinking is required.

When we all thought the earth was flat we didn’t build big ships (why we didn’t need them and could fallen off the ends of the world – who would have been so dumb to do that?).

 

Here we are again, mass customization, customer promiscuity, choice and high expectations. The Age of the digital consumer. Dee Hock, founder of VISA, says it is the biggest thing to happen since Renaissance Europe (about 500 years ago!)

 


Does your organization meet these new challenges with fresh thinking, or they simply extrapolating the (redundant) past.

How much do you need to know, to know you know, you know enough?

Many so called Performance Improvement approaches involve detailed analysis. In some cases

Go beyond the software prescriptions and excessive analysis.
When you know enough stop and move on.

What techniques are you using to understand (rather than analyze excessively) the nature of the work the organization does?

analysis paralysis!

Honestly though how much time should it take to understand something is broke and needs fixing?

Don’t ask the customer want they want. Determine what they need.

Do you give our children everything they say they want? Of course not. 
Then why do we spend gazillions doing that with customers? Research and Focus Groups, Customer Panels, Surveys, Voice of Customer and so on.

The answer isn’t there.
You have to figure out what the customer needs even when they don’t know it themselves.

Remember Henry Ford’s quip: If I had given the customer what they want they would have said faster horses”!

 
Have you identified Customer Needs, or do you stop short with Wants?

Moments of Truth? Eradicate! Only improve a Moment of Truth if you can not remove it.

In 1997 Steve Jobs returned to Apple*. Over a period of 3-4 years he transformed the business into the most innovative company on the planet. One of his mantras was “the customer experience is the process”. Couple that with  ”If you find a Moment of Truth you should remove or improve it”.
Simple ideas that created one of the most successful companies in the universe.
What could you do with your Moments of Truth?

* For a complete transcript and video of that AWWDC 1997 event see here.