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See your business from your customers' prospective

Do your business processes enhance your customer service? Without getting too deep into the Customer Experience (CX) methodology, can you answer some simpler questions from a customer standpoint: Are we easy to do business with? Do we provide enough information so you (our customers) can make decisions you're confident in? Do we provide a positive experience? Are you happier after the interaction? Defined and optimized processes can go a long way toward answering these questions with a "yes" answer, but setting up your systems to provide your customer facing team with the right tools and data can be the details that make the process a positive one. I recently had a client in the Distribution world that was having a problem with their part data. This was a small company that has a few employees and everybody does a bit of everything. Their main software system is Quickbooks Pro, which has the ability to have 3 users, and during business hours when they take ord...
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How do YOU define "Continuous Improvement?"

Continuous Improvement Systems, eh? How do you define “continuous improvement?” Well, continuous improvement is a climb, not a destination. Great, you’re thinking, another one of these “we’ll never get there” type of things. Kind of like “Total Quality”, or “Zero Defects”. Yeah, we want that, but every time we do something, there’s more to do... Just don’t have the patience for these things…. I get it. While “Continuous” infers “never”, it also infers “iterative” and “incremental,” which is what I’m prescribing. Make small improvements that make an impact in smaller areas and can be built upon. “Yeah, we want to be the best Widget maker in the world, but right now we’d settle for a 10% time savings per widget.” Or “I know QuickBooks can print checks and envelopes, but I don’t have the time to figure out how to do that.” (Because I’m writing checks!!) But how do we do that and still get the everyday things done? You do have to stop and define an achievable g...
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