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

Where is the start of the queue?

My last two posts have been about queues - I promise, this will be last one about queues for a while….!

This one goes back a few years, but I see it time and again, in offices, contact centres, post offices, coffee shops…

I was helping a council with their Housing Benefits claims, and spending a lot of time in their contact centre.  A pattern was appearing, there was always a queue after lunch - at it’s worst at about 3pm.

The team had lots of ideas about why that was happening:

• the bus arrives then
• customers always come in at that time
• it’s the weather

If you were in that queue, you might be thinking…

• why am I in a queue?
• they’re always busy after lunch
• they don’t care about me.

So what’s happening?

For a start, the queue didn’t ‘arrive’ at 3pm.  The queue began the moment that demand was greater than the supply of staff to help.  For example, if there were 5 positions open, and 6 people walk through the door as it opens at 9am, then the queue started then.  If the same happens again at 10am (and for ease of maths, assume it takes an hour to deal with each person), then there will be 2 people waiting in a queue.  And so on…

Until lunch, when some staff have their lunch break (seems only fair) and the queue grows further more quickly.  You see what’s happening…

And it’s my belief that … drum roll … queues are entirely ‘man-made’ and can be eliminated if they are approached with a different mind-set.

So, back to the original scenario, although there were 5 people serving at 9am, there were more behind the scenes doing ‘other’ work.  (More about the ‘other’ work later…)  What if we pulled a member of the team into the front desk as soon as we needed to meet demand from the 6th customer.  Queue gone - at 9am.  And when it happens at 10am - the same again.

It’s simple, match the supply of staff to the demand of the customer.

Remember, all the customers get seen in the end anyway - now without a queue - better customer service.

So, what about the ‘other’ work?  Well, when the queue was long, some customers turn on their heals and disappear.  They may phone in, or write in at a later date.  This is the ‘other’ work that has to be dealt with later, but is now more difficult, because it’s harder, or impossible, to interact when not face-to-face.  So this way eliminates waste work.

I’ve helped my clients many times with problems of this type.  And it’s great to see those that have benefitted most still in the top 10 on national league tables.

Where are your queues? - because they’re not always people in reception.  A backlog of emails?  Uncompleted work?  A unusually large level of debt on the aged debt list?

You know where I am if you’d like to know more.

So, how do you make a cup of coffee?

In my last blog, I discussed the queuing issue at low-cost supermarkets, and mentioned the difference between the way Starbucks and Caffe Nero make your coffee order.  Did you spot the difference the last time you were in?

As I mentioned before, if you wonder in without looking, you’ll come out a few minutes later with a coffee.  But if you study it, their working practices are very different.  Both work OK when under ‘low-load’, but during very busy times, one will fail, and the other continues to work smoothly.

Why am I writing about coffee shops on this blog? - because the same ‘queuing’ issues arises time and again in organisations of all shapes and sizes:

• the passport office - does it really takes x weeks to process a passport?
• the post office - why is there a queue at lunch time…?
• service organisations - why are you really on hold? - again?

So, what’s the difference in the coffee shops?  And why is it important?

*** Spoiler Alert ***  You’ll never look at a coffee shop queue in the same way again ***

At Caffe Nero, a person takes you order, then also takes your payment, and they also make your drink - serving you food too if you’ve asked for it.  This is called “one piece flow” - take a customer’s order, and complete it.

At Starbucks, one person takes you order - writes it down, and passes it on.  Sometimes, another person takes your payment.  And a third person makes the drink.  Ever experienced a “lost” coffee when your’s doesn’t arrive? Or the conversation behind the counter when one person can’t remember the message?  Or the barista asks you what your order was again?  And then when it gets busy….  Hand-offs, waste work and re-work everywhere.

So, why does this matter?

If you’re in the coffee shop head office, you’ll never spot these issues, the profits roll in, and it all looks OK.  Not so, if you’re a customer.  It becomes a distinctly average experience.

And why I am writing about it here?

Well, it’s easy to spot the errors in a £3 cup of coffee, when you know where to look.

• But what about when you’re asked to pay £130 for a new passport that takes weeks, and can be late?
• Or on the phone to the bank / insurance co / mobile co / electricity company - again…!?
• Or the paperwork for your new employee is taking a long time and they miss their first pay cheque?
• Or when the £20,000 engineering work you’ve asked for is late or wrong?

Do you regard these as minor customer service issues? - or fundamentally missing the very purpose of your organisation?

These things matter.  Missed deadlines.  Poor customer service. We’ve all experienced it.

Do you know what’s happening at the sharp end of your business? Are customers of yours experiencing this, and you haven’t spotted it…?

Is encouraging Local Authorities to share and/or merge the right thing to do?

For years (centuries?) there have been boundary issues, discussions and disputes between parishes, districts, boroughs and counties.  Where are the lines to be drawn, and who takes responsibility?

Each political area then has its own structure of management – and in most cases consists of:

• unpaid political leaders and members to give the strategic direction as voted for by the population, and
• a paid CEO, directors and managers to lead the staff.  

With over 350 councils in the UK, that’s a lot of management.  At quite a cost.  Central Government continues to struggle to control budgetary pressures, and continues to restrict the funding to local councils.  So how do you do more for less?

In the past, central government has taken control of some of these boundary issues – with varying degrees of success.  Why not merge councils together by changing boundaries?  It’s unlikely they will want to do that directly now - it’s politically sensitive, to say then least! - and a battle they don’t need to fight.  Will councils do it themselves - and vote themselves out of a job…?

Many turn to shared services.  If two or more councils can share a finance department, or IT department, then it only requires one set of managers.  A simple economy of scale - and there are some advantages to this.

The Government are now encouraging closer working by given additional funding to Councils who merge themselves: £15m is being made available for 2014/15 for district councils working together and/or with a county to share Chief Executive’s and SMTs. It’s the sort of thing that Mid Suffolk and Babergh District councils are working on right now.

But what I see so many times, is the failure to recognise that the existing service is almost always highly inefficient with waste work and failure demand in abundance.  So it should always be economies of flow first.

• Understand the customer demand
• Design against purpose
• Reduce/eliminate waste.

This removes all the unnecessary steps leading to improved customer service and reduced cost.  Ask yourself the question: “Do I really understand what the customer experiences when they contact my service?”

Then, there may be possibilities for merging to improve economies of scale.  Do we really need over 350 Council Tax departments across the country, all managing their own, very similar, systems and support hierarchies?

Outsourcing your services - the questions you should ask

Housing managers need to think carefully about whether outsourcing will actually solve their problems - or whether it could exacerbate it.

Link to Guardian article

From: The Guardian