Dal blog di DailyKaizen di Lee Fried sull’importanza e sul potere che si ottiene ascoltando i clienti che rivelano i problemi con i prodotti e fanno partire le iniziative di miglioramento…
A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to spend some time listening to phone calls in our customer service center in preparation for an upcoming improvement event. For those of you that don’t have jobs that regularly put you in contact with your customers I highly recommend making the time to do the same. It is amazing how much you can learn in a short period of time by spending time listening to the voice of the customer. What is just as amazing is how much you can learn from talking to the people who spend forty hours a week listening to the customer. They really have an amazing insight into where the problems are and what the customer needs us to do better.
I spent some time listening to calls with a representative that had been with the organization for more then ten years. After watching her work I was blown away by how efficiently and effectively she navigated the complexity of our organization in service of our customers. The products and processes are so complex and the skill she had to take this complexity and simplify it in service of our customers was impressive. She commented often how each year things seem to get more complex. After hearing a dozen or so calls it was very clear to me that she was right and we need to follow the same path that our friends in manufacturing have walked before us. Once processes are brought under control it is time to work upstream and simplify the design of the product and the process.
Between taking calls I asked her if she thought things were changing for the better or for the worse. She was quick to state that she thought things were changing for the better. That Lean had allowed them for the first time to have an outlet for their ideas and a set of tools to make improvements. She then told me about how applying standard work to how they answer calls had been a huge win for the both organization and the customer. It was exciting to hear her enthusiasm for the improvement. I could not help but think how powerful it will be when we learn to apply Lean principles, methods and thinking that she had learned to our product development process so that her job is not so difficult in the future.
