Processes against customer opinions

I meet a lot of business owners who have a very strict guideline in their investment strategy. Every dollar that goes directly to the value creation process (for example equipment, new trucks, new stores, new warehouses, new services etc.) is welcome, every other area of the operations shall work as is and is not in strategical focus.

If fact, these other areas should be as cheap as possible, so that the spared amount can go again directly to “producing more”. Such thinking led to the result of the difference in customer service quality rating as perceived by huge utility companies, and their clients. According to research 80% of the companies think that they provide exceptional service, while only 8% of their clients have the same opinion. (Source – Lee Resources through Microsoft research)

Not investing enough time and money to think strategically about business supporting processes risks you losing your clients.

But why the big gap? From the company perspective – they have everything that is needed right? Sophisticated systems, staff, processes – and yet, the result is still lacking, due to the fact, that they do not really intend to take the client needs seriously, and rather focus on the internal parts of processes and not the ones important to their clients.

Taking this into consideration it might happen, that even though you feel like what you provide is in the 80% – in reality it is only in 8%. To get a better overview of your own numbers, please bear with me for a moment and let us think together about the following questions.

What operative problems you are facing now, and what do you expect in 10 years?
Every second spent on the wrong task internally loses you the chance to scale your operations and focus on your clients. Furthermore, it will cause frustration and decrease your employee satisfaction leading to fluctuation in the long run.

Do your processes focus on internal or external matters more?
Of course, both parts are equally important, but the keyword here is “equally”. Dig into how you work and identify the current ratio – this way you can see if you need improvement in these areas.

How much time you could save having the optimal operations?
Imagine your company without limits and think about how you would ideally solve the problems you identified before. Doing this will open ideas that might be easier to implement than you currently imagine.

Take your own answers as benchmark – and give these easy to neglect operative shortcomings the focus they deserve.

#2MinuteThoughts #peterkuna