Seeing the opportunity
Visiting a client this morning, I sat at a desk in the customer service area. While there, I witnessed a series of back and forth conversations between various staff, none of it particularly complimentary, about a supporter who had called in to request a statement of her donations going back 10 years.
Now, I’m not sure why this should be too onerous, but it clearly was. But more astonishing was the fact that a 10 year plus donor was on the phone and not once did anyone think to thank them for their contribution. In fact, even through the phone, I’m sure the annoyance would have shone through.
How do you get people to see these kind of calls as an opportunity?
Read Morethe power of referral
I was at a social event last weekend and at this event were a group of people that got talking about their love of a good cup of coffee. The conversation progressed into the equipment we had all purchased to make our coffee and unbelievably, 6 people in the group owned the exact same coffee machine. Well, not so unbelievably as it turned out. Each of us was connected to a single person in that group and that person was known to us as not only an expert in coffee, but also as an expert in researching and choosing great products. So when he said that he had found the best coffee machine on the market, none of us hesitated in following his advice.
This is, to me, a great example of social networking in action. Not only have 6 direct connections to this person taken his recommendation on a product, but I know of 2 others who have made a purchase of the machine based on my recommendation, which is clearly a direct flow on from the original recommendation. Who knows how far this wave of recommendations will reach?
You can definitely leverage this kind of social interraction now by providing the technology for the connected groups within your organisation to communicate these kind of messages simply while giving them the most impact by making them directly available to the most people. Of course, everything starts with a great product, but that’s another thought …
To get some great advice on social networking and making the best use of social networking technologies, send me an email or respond to this post. I also recommend taking a look at Imponna, including this great introductory presentation
Read MoreNo process means bad process
I was at a client last week discussing some possible improvement projects when, as the meeting ended, unrelated to what we had been discussing, there was a seemingly throw away question posed about whether there a better way processing their membership payments. While they were getting the end result they needed out their current process, the data entry steps required were onerous.
While I understood the question and understood how it did not seem efficient, I didn’t know enough to provide a categorical answer to the question. But it did seem reasonable to expect that there was a better way of doing what they were doing. So I asked a few questions of some old heads and sure enough, there was. A much, much simpler process at that. And it didn’t require anything new – the customer already owned the software that controlled the simpler process. Just some reorientation for the processing team to use a different set of procedures.
The impact of this was huge. Literally hundreds of hours of data processing time cut out of every renewals cycle. Great news. But I couldn’t help wondering how they got into a position of doing it the inefficient way for 6 years. How did it take 6 years to ask the question? Why were they not taught to use the most efficient way of processing the first time?
To me, this is clearly the impact of not having defined process. Nowhere had the customer defined the renewals management processes. So, of course, nowhere had they defined the most efficient way of executing those processes, making the best use of people and tools. How could they, when the process wasn’t defined?
Making sure your processes are defined and up to date is a sure way of making sure you are positioned to get the best out of your people and tools.
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