Was your system implemented by one of the major consulting firms? Never having been part of one, I can’t speak to their policies or procedures and I can only judge by the projects I’ve come into AFTER a major consulting company has left. Maybe the perception is biased because I often see poor implementations or failed projects, but I’ve seen some that are considered successful as well and frankly I’m not impressed.

In talking with people involved in projects, it seems to be the pattern that very senior consultants deal with executives at the company and sell them on the project. They’re followed by more junior people who come in and actually do the work. Like anything else, the quality varies. Unfortunately, in some cases I’ve come into, it’s been clear that the understanding of the underlying problems was lacking.

Thick reports and polished presentations don’t mean that they understand you. Look carefully to see if what you’re getting is a solution looking for twist your problem into the right form to fit it. If you start to get the feeling that you’re being overwhelmed with high level talk and it isn’t being made clear to you in your own terms what the problem really is, then maybe you’re not getting what you need.

1. Are the presentations clear and understandable, phrased in terms you would use?
2. Are you and your people involved in gathering data and the follow up analysis?
3. Are the people doing the analysis going to be there for the implementation?

If ANY of these answers are NO, you need to think carefully before you sign on the dotted line.

Let me point out, sometimes it happens that you’ll get just the right thing and everything will work as it’s supposed to. Often enough to be of concern though, it doesn’t. Slick presentations and executive presence doesn’t make for a good customer facing system. Only a systemic understanding will provide a basis for that.

Categories: System Development
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I frequently hear from people that they’re not satisfied with the performance of their Customer Facing System, whether it’s a customer service center, a collection center, a store front, or a front desk. Customer Facing Systems often don’t live up to expectations. Does yours? Have you asked why?

Some systems don’t work well because they “jest grow’d:”. No one ever designed them or considered them seriously, they started small and just kept adding new parts as the needs grew. Pretty soon, they were bigger than ever expected. One manager I spoke with who started with 6 people was frustrated when the 600 working for him couldn’t get things done as well as as fast as the 6!

Other systems were designed by ‘experts’ who applied basic system design principles, designed and implemented software, added telecommunications, and built processes. All of this at tremendous cost. I’ve come in after such projects and often found impressive equipment, massive reports, and a huge price tag, but a failed system. These designed are often the result of what we’ll learn to call ‘Hard Systems Thinking’.
If you’re exceptionally lucky, you got just the right system and just the right implementation and everything works perfectly. However, there are lots of places where this isn’t the case. Chances are pretty good that if you’re reading this, you are unsatisfied with your system. Maybe you don’t know why. Maybe it’s just a feeling of unease in the pit of your stomach that tells you it’s not doing as well as it could. Whatever the case, you know there’s a problem even if you can’t pin it down. Chances are, you’ve got a solution to the wrong problem.

Let’s step back for a moment and think about that phrase I used earlier: Hard Systems Thinking. Hard Systems Thinking is basically the engineering approach to building systems. It starts with a goal, creates a specification, builds a system, and delivers it. Often at great cost. A fundamental assumption though is that you know what the goal really is. What the problem is that you’re trying to solve. It’s amazing how often this isn’t true.

Many engagements have started with a company calling in a major or minor consulting firm, giving them explicit directions for what they wanted, and starting a massive project that went on and on and on. All to often, these projects either didn’t finish or finished with a system that just didn’t do what needed to be done. Getting the right system in such circumstances is pure chance because the starting point just wasn’t right.

When starting to resolve the problem in your gut, the worst thing you can do is decide on the problem and hire a consultant to fix it, because they’ll probably wind up solving the wrong problem. What you need to do is understand the problem in enough depth to deal with it. I’ve spoke to managers and executives many times in these situations and more often than not, they were certain they knew what it was all about and felt they didn’t need any assistance in determining the nature of their problem. Often, following up 1-2 years down the line, they had found out they really didn’t understand their problem.

A Hard Systems or Engineering approach works with systems and software and procedures and ignores the human issues. A great effort may be made to create user interfaces and to design processes and workflows, but the human element is still getting short shrift. If one is to really understand what’s going on, one has to recognize that a Customer Facing System is a Human Activity System which is more than just hardware, software, processes, and people, it’s also a sociological system and a political system with an underlying cultural system that can make or break even the best designs. Too often, the problem AFTER one of these very expensive interventions by a major consulting organization is that the cultural system is fighting back.

Any real system involves both sociology and technology, it’s a Sociotechnical system.

The system is also dependent on the environment. No human activity system stands on it’s own. It interacts with its environment. This leads to other problems. So how do you deal with this? By starting further back and working to understand the WHOLE system and not just the technological part of it. If you don’t you’re doomed to fail.

The approach I learned for dealing with this situation and have come to apply, though maybe not perfectly, is known as ‘Soft Systems Methodology’ (SSM). I certainly don’t do it as originally conceived, but it was always intended as a process that could be adapted by its practitioners. I adapt it as needed, building insight until I can explain the total system and it’s functioning at least as well as anyone within the organization. I’m going to spend some time going over how I apply SSM in learning how to make an organizations Customer Facing Systems work better.

Categories: Hard Systems, Human Activity Systems, Soft Systems
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It’s one thing to say that the heart of a customer facing system is NOT in it’s technology, which is true. Good people can do great things with terrible technology. I’ve studied systems where people were handed their customer contact information on 3X5 cards and worked with that. However, good people with good technology support can do much better.

A recent article ‘Revived Fervor for Smart Monitors Linked to a Server‘ is about what used to be called ‘Thin Client’ workstations. That idea was pushed for some years and never really took off. PC based workstations and Microsoft Windows became and stayed the standard. However, there are good reasons to believe that ‘Thin Clients’ are about to make a comeback. If you’re building or working with a Customer Facing System, then you need to know about this technology. You don’t necessarily need to understand the underlying technology itself, but you should understand what it means for you and the people who are manning your workstations.

Customer Facing systems are often subject to competing requirements and face tight budgets. Today’s economic situation hasn’t made that any easier. Anything that disrupts the system can cause a problem, sometimes a major one, on occasion a devastating one. With 1000 workstations, problems tend to be constant. Luckily, all you need to do to fix it in many cases is simply take a workstation out of stock, load it, and put it in service. However, if the workstation stores data or has programming loaded on it, that may be difficult. In any case, it’s going to take a technical resource to get everything working. Maybe more than one if you have to transfer files to the new workstaiton, reinstall software, or other things. What if there IS no workstation, but it LOOKS like there is one?

With new technologies talked about in this article including virtualization, faster data transfer speeds, higher speed networks, and more, it’s now possible to have a complete workstation stored on a central server, maintained by the central staff, and have the actual hardware in place be minimal. A video display, keyboard, and mouse. I’m working with a ‘Thin Client’ (a browser) right now as I write this note. I have virtual environments stored on my workstation for multiple operating systems in front of me. All in all, the technology is advancing.

Why is this important to you? Because you need to be ready when it’s time to move. In the early days, the technology will be expensive, limited, and prone to problems. Only the most dedicated techies should be bothering with it at that time, though some companies will adopt it and have problems because the decision makers aren’t really thinking about what they’re doing, they’re looking for silver bullets.

Being too late doesn’t help either because if you wait until everything is perfect, everyone else will have already gotten the advantages of the new technology and you’ll be left with a nice system, but which new advances are putting out of date. So there are several things you need to think about:

1. You need to be aware of where technology is going. Keep an eye on the developments and get a chance to see it in action. If you can’t see it in use somewhere, it’s not ready.
2. You need to leave other people to jump early. Watch to see how they do. Find out what their problems are. Let them have the pain of making it work.
3. When the technology is being installed regularly and reliably, jump in if there is a good reason. Just to change is NEVER a good reason. If you’re building a new support center, by all means use the new technology. If you’ve got to replace the old stuff because it’s worn out, then get the new technology. But if you’ve got an efficiently working system, don’t change it just because you can. Change it when you can be convinced that there’s a payoff for doing it.

A lot of people are there to tell you to jump. The smart people are those who jump at just the right time. Not too early and not too late. That’s where you’ll get the maximum benefit out of your new investment.

Categories: Call/Contact Centers, Customer Service, Hard Systems
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No matter what you’re writing or speaking about, if it’s more than a few lines, it deserves some attention and some planning. That’s basic emphasis of my whole approach. it doesn’t require Microsoft Project or similar software and doesn’t require full-blown project management or a specialist like a certified PMP. You need something that I call ‘Everyday Project Management’

What is Everyday Project Management? It’s an approach between time management and project management that uses tools and techniques of both to deal with projects too big for a todo list, but too small for project management tools. I’ve discussed many of the principles in my paper Notes on Time and Project Management. You can also find some applicable information in my introduction to Project Management ‘Project Management 101′

Let’s consider an example.

Assume you need to make a presentation to the executive committee in your company to provide technical justification for a project that you believe in. There’s a business manager who will handle the financial justification, but you need to demonstrate the technical feasibility of the project. You’ve got to make the presentation in a week, so how will you use your time to be ready when your turn comes up to speak?
When I’m going to make a presentation, I start by doing some simple things:

1. I open a tab in my day planner for the presentation and put related notes there.
2. I make a list of everything I know that I’ll have to do to get ready, working through what are generally called planning and visualization
3. I assign dates to the items in the list and put them on the appropriate task list in my day planner. If I have an automated calendar that I’m using for a group collaboration, I’ll enter the items there and set alarms.
4. I open my day planner to the day of the presentation and start a list of last minute things (charge my laptop battery), things I want to make sure are ready, and things to bring (water, power cord, handouts, etc.).

Planning and Visualization are two parts of almost any project, but for Everyday Projects, we do an abbreviated version. For myself, I like to get the goal sorted out and written down. I find it helps me to define the goal in writing. To define the goal, I use the old SMART thumbrule:

• Specific
• Measureable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Timed

These are really thinking points to make sure I haven’t left something without thinking about it. My goal is my end point, so I’ll start with the end, my presentation, and what I want it to me like.

My most important list is what I need to do to get this done, my task list. For an everyday project, I set it up in the back of my dayplanner behind a colored tab.

I try break tasks out so that no single task takes too long. I usually use a mind map to build the list because my thinking is non-linear. I’ll translate it into a linear plan later. In building the list, I’ll ask myself some basic questions:

• What things do I need to DO to get ready? My tasks
• What will interfere with getting things done? My constraints
• Are there any sensitive issues I need to be aware of and handle carefully?
• Are there any logical groupings of tasks that I can use to make what I need to do easier?
• Is there one sequence that makes more sense than any other?
• Is there anyone else I can delegate some of the responsibility to or anyone whose help I need?
• What is my time limit for preparation? Not for delivery, but for preparation. I may need to leave time to review my material with my boss or get copies made, or even get approval before the presentation.
• Are there any costs associated with what I need to do? Is the money allocated to do it?

Once I have my task list in hand, I set aside a box or folder to put things in like reports, books, or anything that I might need to refer to during preparation. I’ll also setup a folder on my computer to hold files that I’ll need to refer to.

All of that is a pretty good start, but there’s more to consider. I’m writing a White Paper which I’ll post to tie it all together.

Categories: General
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One of the important problems you need to deal with when building a Customer Facing System is collaboration support. Not necessary you say? Don’t believe it.

During the analysis of a company’s support services, we uncovered an interesting problem. it seems that customers had learned that they could call into the service line and ask for something. If they didn’t get the answer they wanted, they could call again. If they did it several times, they were likely to get a favorable answer. Sounds like it couldn’t happen right? But it did because the systems didn’t build a collaboration environment in real time:

FIRST - telephone calls weren’t logged in real time. Agents took notes by hand and transcribed them when they could.

SECOND - even when transcribed, the entries were only posted once a day. There was no way to find out if someone had called until the next day

THIRD - many calls never got logged at all because the people who handled the calls did it as a secondary duty and not as their primary responsibility

FOURTH - even conscientious agents often had to transfer a call to someone else and in that case, the calls very often weren’t logged because no one took responsibility for the call

Providing good service through a Customer Facing System requires collaboration, not just to deal with situations like that described above, but for many other reasons as well. The most important reason is that no one person answering the phone can know all the answers.

When you’re dealing with a customer, whether it’s a service or a sales situation, you will need advice and assistance whenever questions come up that aren’t within your area of expertise. These might be major or minor issues, but they’re still issues. Some of this can be dealt with using a knowledgebase of some kind, but some times, you just need to talk to someone to get help. There are a number of ways to do real time collaboration:

Phone Systems - most ACDs will allow you to bring a third party into a conversation. Whether you’re going to transfer the customer or not, this can be a good way to get answers when an expert can be brought into the conversation.

IM Systems - Having everyone checked into an IM system like Jabber or AIM can make them available for quick questions when needed. Sometimes it’s enough. Unfortunately, sometimes people get so wrapped up in IM conversations, they kill the effectiveness of this kind of system.

There are also lots of ways to do non-real time collaboration.

The options are just to wide to give any specifics without knowing in detail the needs of a particular organization. We’ll spend some time talking about different tools later.

Categories: Call/Contact Centers, Customer Service, Systems Analysis & Design
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As I’ve worked with different organizations, one question has often given me the key to unlocking problems with a particular organization. In a calling center, for example, I’ll sit down with the center manager and ask them to explain how their compensation and especially how their bonus is computed? I explain that I don’t need to know the actual numbers, but just what’s the basis for their compensation and for their incentive bonus program. But this isn’t the key question, this is just the lead in.

Once we’ve discussed WHAT compensation is and how the bonus is computed, I ask what change they could make in their operation that would affect their bonus at the end of the period. Want to know how often I get a blank stare?

Variations on the question might be: If they could improve calling rate by 25%, what would be the impact on their bonus? If they could reduce call times by 25%, what would be the impact on their bonus? If they could get a successful conclusion to 25% more calls, what would that do to their bonus? Very few people could give me an answer and none gave me an answer that stood up to a 2nd look.

In most organizations I’ve reviewed, it turns out that NO ONE knows how changes made today could impact their bonuses tomorrow or next week or next year. In other words, they have no control over their bonus. Even if it there is a way to do what I’ve asked, the people on the front line don’t know it. How good an inventive is it if you create a program where no one knows how what they do will affect their incentive?

Everyone talks about motivating their people, but they really don’t pay a lot of attention to what their compensation systems are motivating people to do. Even worse, they don’t give people a way to take positive action to impact their compensation, because the tie in to actual operational reality is loose at best.

If an incentive program is going to work, then it must be tied to factors that the person actually can control. Sales people working on commission have it better in many cases because they can track their sales and know exactly what they need to do to get more. If something isn’t leading to a sale, they can drop it and move on, working on someone else more likely to generate a sale. However, most compensation programs for people working with Customer Facing Systems aren’t anywhere near that good.

The basic principle then for ANY incentive program needs to be ‘Can my people understand the program and control what they do today to get their bonus?’ If you can’t do that, then face it, you’re not providing incentives, you’re gambling.

Categories: Call/Contact Centers, Customer Service
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Here’s an exercise I often assign during the initial work up on a project. At the point I do this, I have a company team together with front-line people and at least one supervisor or manager. I don’t allow programmers or techies in until we’ve spent some time getting people thinking clearly about what they need.

The exercise came about because I was frustrated with people who could say the words about good customer service, but weren’t doing it themselves. As the saying goes, they could ‘talk the talk, but they couldn’t walk the walk’! In most cases, they didn’t even realize what they were doing.

FIRST … everyone goes to lunch or some other non-company activity like stopping at a book store, visiting a gym, or whatever they do with their break time (when I did this in England, it was often stopping at the Pub)

SECOND … everyone records an outline of their experience, capturing not only WHAT happened, but also how they FEEL about what happened.

THIRD … everyone reports to the group on their experience focusing especially on their feelings about what happened, both good and bad and discussing how the good and bad things that happened are happening or not happening in their own jobs.

It doesn’t really work well without a team, because you really have to hear other people discuss THEIR experiences to get the most benefit from it, but try it yourself anyway. You could even do this exercise over the phone. Try calling your PC Manufacturer for service, or Microsoft, or Apple. Record what happened and how you felt about it. For example …

———————– Phone Service Experience ——————-
I’ve been waiting here for 30 minutes and all I hear is elevator music
I keep hearing that my call is important to them, but no one comes and there’s no way out without losing my place.
OOPS … finally got someone … they’re taking down a ton of information that isn’t related to my problem … what’s this all about … I just want to know why my service isn’t working!
OK … they’re happy, now on to the problem …
D#$N … the person who answered is transferring me to technical service because they can’t help … I’m off on a ringing phone again!
Double D#$N … the phone stopped everything and I got nothing, no sound, nothing …
I GOT THE DIAL TONE BACK! The transfer didn’t work and the person I talked to doesn’t know! I’ll have to start all over again.
I’m FRUSTRATED, MAD, and I’ll take this out on anyone who answers the phone!
———————————————————————-

Sounds bad … that was a real call … I won’t say to what vendor, but the names have been changed, hidden, and otherwise deleted to protect the guilty! Could this happen in YOUR service center with YOUR Customer Facing System?

One of the things I found in using this exercise was that agents became far more aware of how important feelings are in judging the success or failure of a transaction. They learn that you can solve the problem the customer has handed you, but still fail the transaction if the customer isn’t satisfied in some way with the effort. Managers and Supervisors learned the importance of providing a continuous process that smoothly moves the customer through from initial contact to resolution. … AND … I learned where the holes are in their systems so I can think about how best to plug them.

For many people, it introduces a whole new perspective on what they REALLY need to do on the phone or face-to-face with a customer.

Categories: Call/Contact Centers, Customer Service
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Customer Facing Systems are important to any business, no matter how large or small. Unfortunately, they are often poorly implemented even by large companies with enormous resources. Why?

The answer is simple, interactions with customers APPEAR simple, but when you wrap up many interactions in many forms over a long period of time and you involve many people in doing it, then even a small mistake can have large consequences. My services are available to assist in reviewing, designing, or analyzing customer facing systems. If you like what you’re reading here, then you know I can help achieve what you want.

I’ve added a link to my Services on the blog menu at the right side. I’ve summarized what I can do for you there. To get a start, I offer a free phone interview where we can map out the problems you’re facing and discuss how I can help. We can extend that with an online meeting where we can share overviews of systems, plans, and designs if that will help. Write to me with your contact information to setup a meeting

Contact me now for a free consultation by phone or online

Fill out the form with your contact information. Include a phone number and I’ll contact you within the next several business days.

Categories: General
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I recently ran across a reference to a software package called ‘MarsEdit‘ which is an offline editor for blogs. I’ve downloaded it and I’m going to try it for the 30-day trial. I’ll be tracking it on my Writing blog, so if you’re interested, drop by to follow along on what I’m finding.

NOTE: MarsEdit is for MAC OSX only, it won’t work on Windows. But this is about more than just using a Mac version of something, I’m interested in the good and bad of using an offline editor overall. If I find something for Windows or Linux that appears as good, I’ll probably setup a trial of that software as well.

Categories: General
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