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Can your organization be agile and adaptable, while still offering consistently outstanding service??
Many organizations double down on one approach or the other. They prioritize innovation and let many standard operating procedures fall by the wayside… or they create a complex set of rules, processes, and procedures meant to ensure consistency across the organization.
But the reality is, neither approach works in isolation!!
Your team MUST be empowered to innovate and experiment, so they can find new ways to serve your customers and create more value. But this innovation CANNOT come at the expense of service levels that your customers can count on.
Watch the video to discover how to offer exceptional service that’s both agile AND consistent.
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Below is an Autogenerated Transcript
A leader in a large organization recently asked me, “How do we balance being agile when we’re constantly testing and changing and trying, and doing new and different things with being standardized and consistent, and being able to be more efficient and productive with our processes?”
Whew! Good question. Can these two actually be compatible?
The answer is yes, they can. What you want to standardize is the caliber and quality of experience that you create for your customers. But you must remember, customers are different and even the same customer could experience and want something differently at different moments in time.So the actions that you take need to be agile while the standard that you’re aiming to achieve can be consistent.
Let me give you an example.
There’s a large international organization where the headquarters was in Switzerland. I was visiting and working with the CEO. And I heard about the fact that one of their representatives in San Francisco sent their customers chocolate chip cookies. The customer was so delighted that they wrote a letter to the Swiss CEO. Well, the Swiss CEO looked at the letter and said, “This is great!I want all of our representatives all over the world to send all of their customers chocolate chip cookies.”
We got a problem with that because in some parts of the world, people don’t really like chocolate chip cookies. Maybe they want Anzac biscuits. Maybe they want fortune cookies. Maybe they want oatmeal cookies. Maybe they don’t want cookies at all. What they really like is chocolate. Maybe it’s not chocolate, it’s some kind of a non-alcoholic drink.
So, what’s the point?
If what you want to do is delight your customers, set that as the standard. You want to surprise them.You want to serve them the way they want to be served. We call that desire. But don’t lock in the method that you use. Instead, give your people the freedom and the flexibility to take the right action that produces that response for the customers they serve.
Service action that doesn’t create value is not called service. It’s called waste.
What you don’t want to do is standardize the process to the point where customers are receiving that standard action and it’s not what they appreciate. What you do want to do is set the standard of the experience you provide and then free your people to think, so they themselves can come up with the right actions that give your customers the experience that you desire they receive.
