It’s all about the people.

It’s all about the people.

I was talking to someone this week about “the people” in transformational change. Its always about the people, and often in ways you might not expect.

I’ve worked with Lisa and her Madabout team for years (we’ve known each other about 20 years now…) and I remember vividly one of our first collaborative conversations - about a new piece of work she’d won to help train hotel receptionists.

The receptionists were getting lower than expected scores on their NPS.  So some ‘happy’ training planned.

I was obviously delighted with her win.

Then I asked some questions.

• Why are the receptionists unhappy?
• Surely the HR Director didn’t recruit unhappy receptionists?
• What has happened to make them unhappy?

It certainly turned the assignment on it’s head.

And using some basic root-cause analysis soon highlighted the real issues - management had tasked the receptionists with jobs to do at vital times - such as cashing up the till at 8am as the guests were trying to check out…  

And the root cause of that was because the central Finance Director needed cash reports at a fixed time in the afternoon, and the message had been relayed down the chain - whilst everyone forgot about the customer, and about purpose…

So, yes, people did need training.  But not the happy people that had been employed, and who’d then got upset…

This happened many moons ago - and yet it’s a common issue that I continue to see.

At a seminar this morning hosted by Michael Page and Change Associates, the guest speaker - Matthew Taylor from the RSA - talked about the challenges of employment in the modern age (not just IR35 issues) having been tasked by the PM in 2017  - and produced the paper : Good Work: The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices.  He also talked about how business should be focussed on “Creating Community with a Cause” - and I couldn’t agree more.

Having been undertaking system change programmes for years, I’ve left my clients with all sort of ‘nice problems to have’:

• The Council Chief Executive who was surprised at the smiles on his teams’ faces, and ‘thank you’ cards from citizens,
• Contact centre managers where staff weren’t leaving because they were enjoying their jobs because they were allowed time to investigate issues and resolve to conclusion,
• The Managing Director who is driving his business, taking control of sales, and is successfully expanding, and
• Working with a couple of bright-young-things in a council Highways department who very quickly picked-up the baton and ran with some tremendous service improvements.

Customer.

Purpose.

What matters.

You can’t beat it.

Want to know more:

 - about Matt Arnold

 - give me a call on 07775 595 595

 - email on matt595@me.com

The right information - right first time

Whether it be electricity billing, payroll services, or fixing potholes, ensuring the work starts correctly with the right information is often the first issue I discover as I undertake my diagnosis.

• Why aren’t all the electricity bills going out? Because not all the information about the customer has come from sales, and/or not all the meter technical details have been transferred across, and/or other data that was due in still hasn’t arrived….
• Why is the person that has left still being paid?  Because the process for a manager to contact a remote HR/payroll team is too complicated, something else causes a distraction, and the deadline gets missed…
• Why are gangs of workers not able to fix the problem on site?  Because they’ve been given inaccurate, incorrect, or out of date information to undertake the work. They arrive on site and then can’t complete the work…

It’s easy to dismiss these things as simple issues that happen sometimes.  But in all of these examples, they were happening every day, day-after-day, and often for years.  

All of them hit the bottom line directly.

• I’ve seen double digit percentages of unbilled utility accounts, all hitting profit, undoubtedly worth £m’s…  We analysed the system of work, and the majority were resolved over a few months.
• I’ve seen teams of people dealing with over and under payroll payments - all of them unnecessary if they had the information right-first-time - certainly worth many £000’s per year…  Designed out in hours, and fully implemented in weeks.
• I’ve seen organisations where at least one of their twenty gangs (man/men in a van) have been stuck in the depot each day.  They don’t earn if they’re in the depot.  Approximately £1000 a day.  £1/4m per year…?  Re-engineered over a few weeks with all the team on board, and the problem resolved.

It has the potential to happen anywhere, sitting there undiagnosed and often unseen, and yet can be the key to customer service, and improved margin.

Want to know more:

 - about Matt Arnold

 - give me a call on 07775 595 595

 - email on matt595@me.com

Are you twice as busy as you should be...?

In my last post, I talked about the potential waste in systems and processes in the service industry, call centre, and processing centres.  So I’d thought I’d add another simple example.

I was helping an HR Director with one of her Payroll Managers and teams.  The team just seemed so busy - twice as busy as the felt they should be.

So, we got stuck in and looked at the flow of work:

Timesheets : about 10,000 were received each month, with half arriving from outside the UK.  We soon found that many were coming through with errors - incorrect cost code, no signature, can’t read the writing.  Many had to be returned.  And then even some of those were sent back with further errors.  Back and forth, back and forth.  The total number of touches was closer to 20,000.  Literally doing all the work twice.

Expense forms : same again.

New starters : often not enough data to process the first payment in time, resulting in re-work, chasing telephone calls, and an unhappy new member of staff.

Leavers : a complicated process, often resulting in the continuation of payment of the employee had left, resulting in difficult additional work to collect he over payment.

Literally, doing everything twice. Everywhere. Every day.

And it’s worth remembering:

• everyone was trying to do a good job
• and if you’d walked through the office, everyone would be looking busy (probably a little frazzled)

It takes different thinking to stop, look at purpose, the value work, the waste work, the flow - and to start thinking about a different way.

I’ve seen the same in banking, billing, debt collection, payroll, HR, ‘man and van’ systems.

And automation isn’t the answer - without the right approach, it’s very easy to think these working practises are ‘normal’ and end up embedding them into a new automated system/process.

So, doing everything twice - costing twice as much as it should, or half as efficient as they could.

Need a hand taking a look…

 - give me a call on 07775 595 595
 - email on matt595@me.com
 - about Matt Arnold

Doing a good job? Or not? Or not sure…?

It’s easy to walk into a large contact centre or processing office and see lots of people, head-sets on or working from screens - all looking busy - but are they really being effective…?

But take a closer look, and it doesn’t always look so rosy. Without purpose, you can very quickly find yourself, and your organisation, getting very busy, but unknowingly going around in circles.

Let me give you an example I came across a few years ago, a large government body who was managing ‘grants’ (for want of a better word) to certain vulnerable adults to help them live an independent life.

Prior to meeting their CEO, I took a look through their glossy report and accounts for the year.  In large, bold writing across a number of pages they showed how hard they were working by quoting the volumes of work they were processing: 

• Staff c.280
• Applications of c.9000 (per year)
• Post at over 150,000 items (per year)

Sounds good doesn’t it - nothing to see here.

And trust me, everyone was working hard, was well-intentioned, and committed to doing a good job.

But when you understand purpose, customer, value demand and waste work, you begin to understand where to look and which questions to ask.

So, some simple maths from the example above:

• This is equivalent to giving 1 application, to a cross-sectional team of 8 people, and allowing them a whole day between them to complete the application.  ie, 8 man-days to complete one application.
• And each application appears to involve, on average, 17 pieces of post.

This doesn’t sound very efficient.

And it’s like this everywhere I go:

• I worked in a large service centre where 100 or so agents are working on billing customers.  Each month, a few customers weren’t billed, and those customers weren’t billed the next month either, and so on.  This got to the point where 10% of the customers where unbilled at the end of each month.  Working with the team, we uncovered the complexity of the unbilled accounts, worked them a different way (by working to conclusion, account-by-account), and resolving root cause issues for the whole customer base.  In-month unbilled reduced to 2% within just a few months.

• My first assignment at a Housing Benefits department was taking 59 days end-to-end to complete each claim.  I was able to reduce this to 19 days by doing things right-first-time and removing the waste work.  The last time I was in Housing Benefits, we managed to reduce the work such that half of all claims were undertaken in less that one hour.

The advantages of doing it right in both these examples is enormous.

• Massive improvements in customer satisfaction.  
• A significant cost reduction as work is processed once, and not multiple times. 
• Massive improvements in staff satisfaction.

As I said above - these services are full of great people, doing some great things.  What’s difficult to see in the day-to-day busyness of the office, is that much of the work is just contributing to going round in circles.

This isn’t just changing the processes. It’s changing the whole system, including the management system and the way people think about their work.

Most of these examples were solved by:

• senior management looking at the root cause
• allowing staff to spend as much time as needed to resolve the issues, rather than the usual ‘2.5mins’ allowed in calling handling
• working on ensuring information is gathered right-first-time.

It’s the management team that need to understand there’s a better way of doing things.

I’ve recently been getting involved with some organisations that help vulnerable adults and homelessness - great people, doing some great things, helping those most in need.  The system of work is surprisingly similar to office type work, and I’m worried the same thing is happening there.

These are examples of waste-work that is locked-in the system - hiding in plain sight.  I have no doubt that it is the same in other industries:

• health care - we know there is great work going on in hospitals and surgeries, and yet there is the frustration of multiple visits, poor communication between departments, the feeling of being forgotten, the next appointment in 2 months etc…
• adult social care - where a vulnerable adult is passed from one siloed department to another, each team getting a ‘tick’ for completing their thing, but leaving the customer feeling like they’re going round in circles…
• homelessness - where having poked around this system in recent months, I fear there are many many people, all working hard, but probably in a way that is sustaining the problem, not resolving it…

For a better understanding of where the benefits lay, click on the links below:

• root cause analysis
• waste work
• cost reduction

Want to know more:

 - about Matt Arnold

 - give me a call on 07775 595 595

 - email on matt595@me.com

Stick to Purpose, and remove the Waste Work.

I’ve just completed a great assignment with an electric company - a rapid change to their collections processes that now focusses on outcomes rather than activity.

In little more the two months, the team changed their priorities to tackling the larger/hardest debts first, dealing with them to conclusion, resolving upstream issues, and allocating more resource to problem resolution away from basic dialling. 

The buzz in the office was amazing.  The advisors were clearly active on the phone, investigating, chasing and progressing issues.  The numbers spoke for themselves.  And the staff satisfaction level leapt up.

All based on core Systems-Thinking principles of purpose, customer, demand and eliminating the waste work.

It’s amazing what a simple scientific method can lead too, and quickly.

Happy New Year!

Like a Rubiks Cube

I love my job.  That might already be clear from articles that I write.

There’s good reason - every day is like solving a Rubik’s cube.  However difficult a situation is, I know there’s an answer.  The solution is right there in front of you - you just need a method to work it out.

There are 42 million million million combinations of Rubik’s cube.  But aged about 10, I was given some instructions on how to solve the puzzle.  After some learning, I was able to complete the cube in about 2 minutes.

I find solving process-flow issues in contact centres, processing centres or service systems just like solving the Rubik’s cube.  These organisation rarely involve rocket-science - most send bills, fix customer queries, chase money - but many I see have tied themselves in a knot and ended up with service in decline, backlogs forming, and the teams struggling to get on top of things.  But I always know the solution is in there somewhere.

If only there was a method to apply to solve this puzzle.

Good job that there is then:

• What’s the purpose?

• What is the customer demand?

• How we are dealing with customer queries?

• What’s stopping us dealing with issues right-first-time?

• What are the root-cause issues?

• Why is the customer unhappy?

• Why are there backlogs?

• How many times is the customer contacting us?

• How many touches are there to resolve the customer issue?

• Who’s measuring the backlogs?

• What does the backlog look like?

• How long does it take to resolve the issues?

And of course, don’t forgot the people and the management:

• Are the leaders in the work, understanding how the work works?

• What’s stopping them doing that?

• Are they focussing on and prioritising the customer journey?

• Are they looking for ares of waste and rework?

• What measures are they focussing on?

The Systems Thinking approach, when applied to the service industry, soon highlights the real issues, surfaces where the waste work is being undertaken, and where rework and unnecessary customer contact is coming in.

It’s not complicated - when you’ve got a method.

Want to know more:
 - about Matt Arnold

 - give me a call on 07775 595 595

 - email on matt595@me.com

Strategic v Tactical…. or is it fundamental? Part 2

In my last article I wrote about the difference between strategic and tactical thinking with respect to large processing / contact centres, and, in my opinion, explained why I thought this was just wrong-headed. 

When a large part of the organisation is there to ensure customers are happy, it’s fundamental to ensure queries are cleared as soon as possible, or better still, avoid queries all together.

So, how do organisations get into this situation in the first place…?

1. A lack of consideration of: purpose; the customer demand and; what they are actually there to do.  Many of my articles explain this further.

But I think other issues start to arise too.

2. As people get promoted, from agent, to team leader, to senior, to manager etc, they get further from the work.  Many want to get further from the work - they’ve been there long enough, it’s someone else’s turn - especially if the customers aren’t happy because they’re spinning around in the waste work.

My point: as people get more senior, they need to understand the flow of work better than ever - to explore the true customer journey, looking for blockages and hot-spots - to ensure purpose is being met.

A good leader needs to understand the bigger picture AND understand the detail.  They need to understand what the customer experiences, and understand the work that such a huge and expensive resource undertakes.

I’ve seen many large scale operations where most of the work being undertaken is processed twice-over - think of the cost.  I’ve also seen organisations where the work seems to just continually spin round and round...

In a “man-in-a-van” housing repairs operation I reviewed a few years back, the director soon picked up on what I’d discovered.

On almost every visit to a customer, we were welcomed with “Hello, nice to see you again.”  “Again?” - we’d come to fix something, and someone had already been out to fix it, but failed.  A trip to the depot, picking up parts, a drive across town, have a go at fixing something - all done twice over.

When reporting this back in the board room, the director immediately understood - “have we got twice the number of men and vans we should have…?”  Possibly.  Better still, use the existing team to fix the work in a shorter time, and complete more work.  A reduced cost-per-fix, and happier customers.

If you really want to understand what your team is doing, go and review a customer journey:

• Pick a customer on the computer system, and see how many contacts it took to complete the query.

• Hop in a van and see what the workman actually faces as they do their work.

• Listen to some calls, and hear what the customer says, and listen to what your staff do in response.

Was this the customer’s first contact?  Was it fixed right first time?  Could we have done better?  Could the problem be resolved all together such that no other customers repeat that journey?

Leadership is about understanding what’s really happening on the floor, and helping your team achieve great service for your customer.

Strategic v Tactical…. or is it fundamental?

Much of my work is undertaken in the service industry, and often in large processing centres where the work is done, customers phone in, problems are resolved, and often payment is chased.  In recent times, these have included utility companies, banks and councils.

I’ve had a few really interesting discussions over the last few months as to whether this work is tactical, or strategic.  

Undertaking my work, I’ll spend a fair bit of time talking to the Operations Director and/or the CEO about where the problems are, why this is happening, how we might fix it, and any changes to structure that may be required.  Equally, much time is required in the work, looking at the real detail of what is going on: the processes being followed (or not), keeping up with housekeeping / exception reports (or not), and tracking work load (or backlogs).

Ultimately, I think the strategic/tactical debate is just plain wrong.

If the organisation has a clear purpose (and many don’t), and the diagnosis is that many of the staff are not in a position to be able to complete their work (mostly it’s not their fault), then this isn’t tactical or strategic.  It’s fundamental.

At a utility company in 2017, I was reviewing an entire customer journey end-to-end.  The contact centre looked very busy, but they knew they had issues - they just couldn’t work it out.   My review found amongst other things:

• high levels of customer query backlogs
• manual billing processes where upstream errors had created very complicated situations for new CSAs to attempt to rectify
• processing work that was being “interrupted” by customer queries.

I’ve seen this situation in many service centres, across many service areas.  It was like they were going round in circles.

One thing that is always guaranteed:

• everyone was working hard
• everyone wants to do a good job
• there are lots of really good people working in these centres.

But, if you’re not careful, you can very easily get tied in a knot:

• you answer a call, and begin to understand the customer issue
• you complete the call, and begin to spend a little time resolving the problem
• then the next customer calls (and you haven’t finished the last one)
• you don’t get a chance to complete the first customer, who then calls back a week later
• repeat

Taking time to resolve the root-cause, and also the root-cause so that it doesn’t happen to other customer too, is the way to lead the team into great customer satisfaction.

Sounds easy - when you know how.

I’ve seen whole contact centres do this - 100’s of people, going round in circles:

• Meeting KPIs : average call time, number of calls a day, reasonable customer satisfaction etc.
• But failing to complete the true task  - failing to meet purpose.

Just think of the cost:

• 100’s of salaries paid for CSAs to go around in circles
• unhappy customers stuck in these whirlpools of problems

Getting to the heart of these problems and lining up the work to avoid waste isn’t tactical or strategic - it’s fundamental.

Want to know mare - call me - 07775 595 595

Changing the system to get very different results.

I’ve posted before about how small changes in the system can deliver dramatic results.  I especially like the ones where the answer isn’t where you’d expect it to be. 

One has to really study the system first:

• what is the purpose of the operation?
• what is the customer journey?
• what other factors are playing out?
• what demands are being placed on the work?

I came across a fascinating one today - one that has already significantly reduced loss of life…

A previous examples - in fact my very first blog - and I frequently re-tell the story of the bins in the fast-food store:

https://595or.blogspot.com/2011/08/design-problem-out.html

If you make the bin holes smaller, the tray can’t be thrown away.

Another previous example - The Lincoln Memorial issue was similar:

https://595or.blogspot.com/2015/03/systems-thinking-and-why-lean-tools.html

A small change in the system, at literally zero cost, drastically altered the outcomes.

The one I heard about today involves a story that we’ve all seen in the news over recent times - mostly in the US, frequently involving race connotations, and it’s pretty much what started The Black Lives Matter movement.

A study of the way US police officers pursue and intercept targets has shown that its the heat of the pursuit that affects decision making, potentially leading to death of the suspect.

From the BBC Inquiry podcast “Can you train people to be less prejudiced” - a change in the system of pursuit that lead to dramatic reduction in fatalities.  By taking the heat out of the situation, adding more time into the equation, and helping the officer re-assess and balance any bias they may have, has dramatically changed outcomes.

The whole podcast is worth a listen, but the key message is described from 17:01, and takes less than 2 minutes:

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/can-you-train-people-to-be-less-prejudiced/id932499233?i=1000414269329&mt=2

By changing the current ‘hot’ “foot pursuit” policy to one where they hold back, call for help, and surround the situation, the officer-involved shootings have gone down - dramatically.

And of course, there are business opportunities here too:

• Taking the heat out of rapid decision making
• Taking a step back and seeing the whole picture
• Identifying potential bias situations

could lead to improved decision making and outcomes.

FACTFULNESS by Hans Rosling

Wow - I’ve just read this book, and its quite amazing - I’d recommend it to everyone. 

You may have seen or heard Hans Rosling in TED Talks in recent years, simply explaining that our mental models of the world today are broadly wrong - very wrong.  His approach, very much like W Edwards Deming, is to look at the numbers - and with clever presentation, clearly demonstrates where the real issues are based against poverty and wealth.

Armed with great data, better decisions can then be made.  One of my favourites: when a midwife in a poor country (level 1 poverty) was asked what she most needed to do her job properly, her response was needing a torch so she wasn’t killed by a snake whilst trekking to a patient in the dark.

If you want to dive in and spend 10 minutes understanding a little more, here’s their test, and see how you score on world poverty, health and wealth:

http://forms.gapminder.org/s3/test-2018

Their main website:

https://www.gapminder.org

The book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Factfulness-Reasons-Wrong-Things-Better/dp/1473637465/ref=sr_1_1/258-9003093-5818558?ie=UTF8&qid=1528811721&sr=8-1&keywords=factfulness

Some businesses are 14 times better than others

As many of you may know, I’ve worked in quite a few Local Authority Housing Benefit departments - these teams provide benefits to vulnerable adults to assist with rent and council tax payments if they are on low incomes.  Not only is there usually ample scope for improvement, it also means those that need the money get it sooner.

I continue to do research on the national figures, and they’re interesting reading - the difference in performance is far larger than you might expect:

 - some councils undertake their claims in an average of 4 days,

 - other take as long as 57 days, and

 - over 200 councils take longer than 20 days.

So, some councils are 14 times better than others.

In the past, I helped one council enable them to pay half of their claims in less than one hour - it can be done - it’s better customer service, and considerably cheaper.

Why is this important?

1. It’s much better customer service, the customer makes less contact, and they get their issues resolved more quickly
2. It’s cheaper for the business because everything gets completed sooner, and
3. The staff love it because they get a chance to resolve customer issues properly.

Example: If you had financial difficulties, how often would you chase your payments? - once a week?  In the examples above, one council would be receive no chasing telephone calls, whilst another might be receiving as many as eight chasing calls, ie one business needs a large call centre, the other doesn’t.

Example: again, in the examples above, one council would be drowning in a sea of claims paper work that I estimate at over 1000 claim files, the other would have approximately 20 files as work-in-progress.  So, one council would need a large and expensive document imaging system, the other, possibly a shelf?

But this doesn’t just happen in the public sector - they’re the ones that are brave enough (or instructed to) provide consistent figures so that consultants like me to can undertake some comparative analysis.

It happens in businesses too - I see it regularly.  Whether its on-line gambling, electricity or engineering (all recent assignments) I see situations where:

 - purpose has been forgotten

 - the same predictable issues occur time again

 - there is little attention to understanding root cause

 - the work flow has not been understood from the customers’ perspective, and

 - there’s failure to truly design the process based on what is actually required.

Examples I’ve seen lately:

 - sending engineers to site with incorrect or out-of-date drawings meaning that they can’t complete the work

 - not sending out bills because of blockages upstream in the process, causing problems in customer services and credit control

 - not being able to see the underlying “production line” of work flow, resulting in ineffective controls of highly regulated areas of the business.

This isn’t just about some changes to the tactical plans of the business, it’s fundamental to the strategy of the leadership agenda.  It’s not just a process thing - it’s at the very heart of what a business is there to do.  In all of my recent assignments, the benefits to the customer journey, the staff, and the bottom line have been significant.