Customers For Life

Our only source of competitive advantage is our people and the service they provide. Carl Sewell and Paul B. Brown

Not only do customers expect better-quality products and better service, they want to receive them faster and more easily. We realize we only have one way to differentiate ourselves, and that is through our people.

The Ten Commandments of Customer Service

1. Bring 'em back alive. Ask customers what they want and give it to them again and again.
2. Systems, not smiles. Saying please and thank you doesn't ensure you'll do the job right the first time, every time. Only systems guarantee you that.
3. Underpromise,  overdeliver. Customers expect you to keep your word. Exceed it.
4. When the customer asks, the answer is always yes. Period
5. Fire your inspectors and customer relations department. Every employee who deals with clients must have the authority to handle complaints.
6. No Complaints? Something's wrong. Encourage your customers to tell you what you are doing wrong.
7. Measure Everything. Baseball teams do it. Football teams do it. Basketball teams do. You should too.
8. Salaries are unfair. Pay like partners.
9. Your mother was right. Show people respect. Be polite. It works.
10. Learn how the best really do it, make their systems your own. Then improve them.

Note: The ten rules aren't worth a damn...unless you make a profit. You have to make money to stay in business and provide good service.

Decide to Be the Best.

"Making a true decision means committing to achieving a result and then cutting yourself off from any other possibility." Tony Robbins

Focus groups are extremely effective. They're a check to see how well you are doing because you're asking customers how they like doing business with you. Focus groups help you keep tabs on things. When you have multiple locations, you cant spend enough time wandering around each one. You need additional information, like focus groups.They can be very simple. We (either I or one of our senior managers) get ten to twelve people in a room and start asking questions about how they like doing business with us, what they see are our strengths and weaknesses. When we pick people to invite, we make sure they're representative of our customers, or people we would like to be our customers. You have to apply a little statistical logic to help sort the data.

Customer service is a 24-hour-a-day deal. It has to be. First off, customers will, on occasion, ask you to do something after closing, or on a Sunday. And when the rule is: "When the customer says can you? The answer is always yes," it has to be yes then too. We want people to call us, no matter what time it is. They're our customers, and we want to take care of them. Besides, we would rather do the work than having our customers give it to somebody else who would charge more and care less. No matter what business you're in, customers like to have a number to call after hours. Almost every time someone calls us "after hours," it's because they need help and they need it immediately. If they need help, we should provide it, no matter what time it is. It gives us a chance to maintain our relationship with the customer, by doing something for him, and people really like the service.

Doing a job has two parts:

1. Doing the job right the first time; and
2. Having a plan in place to deal with things when they go wrong. Having systems that allow you to do both those things are more important that all the warm and fuzzy feeling in the world. After all, it doesn't make any difference to our customers how nice we are if we don't do the job right or, at the very least, immediately take care of the problem when something goes wrong.

Systems have always been an integral part of manufacturing. Without carefully planned and measured processes, there's no way to make anything efficiently.

In the automobile industry, for example, the people with process-oriented minds usually are engineers. And as a rule, they tend to go into either design or manufacturing. There are thousands of engineers who have spent their entire lives studying manufacturing processes-just-in-time inventory systems, statistical process controls, and manufacturing processing theory. They apply these systems when building cars.

Service companies should employ this same kind f systematic thinking, but most service consultants spend too much time on "smiles" instead of systems.

Being nice to people is just 20% of providing good customer service. The important part is designing systems that allow you to do the job right the first time. All of the smiles in the world aren't going to help you if your product or service is not what the customer wants.

But they should know about them because applying those kinds of systems which are designed to eliminate every possible variation-this is the most efficient way of improving the service you provide. The writings of people like Edwards Deming, Eliyahu Goldratt (The Goal), Taiichi Ohno, the man who set up Toyota's manufacturing systems, and Genichi Taguchi are great resources to draw on to create efficient service systems. As Taguchi says: The more variations you can eliminate, the better your product or service will be.

Systematic approaches are 80% of customer service. They're whats really important, not the smile and thank yous. The key to devising systems that allow you to give the customer what he wants every time.

Check List

1. What can go wrong? That's the question to ask in designing your systems. Examine every step you take in delivering your products or service, and see where there are possibilities for error or variation. Then figure out ways to eliminate them.
2. What can be automated? By using computers, or automated processes wherever possible, you not only increase the speed of each transaction, you also decrease the chance for human error.
3. Look to manufactureres, if you want to provide good service. Manufactures, not service companies, have the best systems. They should be your models.

Now no matter what we do, and no matter what we do, and no matter how diligent everyone is, there will still be problems. It's inevitable. WE're all human and make mistakes. And, despite all their quality assurance programs, manufacturers still upon occasion-let a defect slip through.

But instead of simply shrugging our shoulders and saying, "Mistakes will happen," we keep track of the work that has to be redone, and after we fix the job for the customer, we fix the flaw in our system that allowed the problem to slip through.

The way to eliminate the concern is to error-proof the process in some manner to prevent the defect from leaving the point of origin. There are many ways to accomplish this task.

1. Use cross-functional teams (CFT) approach to mistake proofing.

2. Selection of process for mistake proofing.

During the third phase of advanced product quality planning (APQP), the CFT shall identify the processes, where, due to avoidable human errors, the rating of “occurrence” and/or “detection” have increased thereby increasing the risk priority number (RPN) for the process. Poka-yoke techniques of mistake-proofing are applied to these processes in order to lower the ratings of occurrence and/or detection.

Analysis of customer complaints also reveals activities which are in need of mistake proofing, in order to achieve a zero defect level of working. CFT will undertake application of poka-yoke techniques to these processes.

3. The selected mistake proofing technique should qualify the following criteria:

• Inexpensive
• Based upon common sense, preferably of the operator or the first line employee
• It MUST eliminate occurrence/detection of the problem at the source itself

4. Occurrence oriented poka-yoke should follow the procedure as below:

First, classify the source of occurrence as follows:

• Required action is NOT performed or is performed incorrectly.
• The undesired action is exercised.
• Information essential for performing the action is misinterpreted.
• The mistake occurs due to complexity.

After having classified the source, apply one of the following techniques, as appropriate, to prevent the occurrence:

• Use of 100 percent prevention devices such as fouling pins; contoured locators or templates; proximity or photo-electric sensors; limit- or micro-switches; warning lights or buzzers; or pressure transducers.
• Design to modify to ensure that in assembly the parts shall not join if aligned wrongly. The machine will not run if operators’ hands or feet are not outside, or if the job and tooling are not in right position.

These techniques should be an integral part of the process. The devices are placed sufficiently close to where the mistakes occur, providing fast feedback to the operator, of mistakes occurring.

5. Detection oriented poka-yoke should use one of the following techniques for ensuring 100 percent detection of the mistake:

• It should be autonomous inspection occurring without intervention.
• It should be 100 percent inspection which occurs without intervention.
• It should determine before-the-fact whether the conditions for 100 percent quality exist or not.
• It should make the error visible to the operator.
• Consider supply of exactly made kits of components to the assembler, so that any balance part will signal error in assembly.
• Consider use of electronic sensors to activate warning lights or buzzers.
• Use color-coded parts or graphics.
• Make use of contact devices (e.g., fixtures, limit switches, probes or non-contact devices such as LEDs and pressure transducers).

6. The effectiveness of the applied poka-yoke technique should be judged after observing the performance, for a period of minimum one month.

Kiran Walimbe

Do it Right The First Time

Over the years we have developed a 10-point mental checklist that we use before we change anything, we ask these 10 questions. Before we move forward, we must be comfortable with the answer to each one.

1. What is the benefit to the customer?
2. Will the customer easily understand that benefit?
3. What impact will this idea, program, or system have on our employees?
4. How will it affect our existing system?
5. Is anybody else doing it successfully? What can we learn from the experience?
6. What could go wrong?
7. Will it give us an advantage over our competitors?
8. How much will it cost?
9. Will it make money?
10. When should we evaluate it?

Here are a couple of points to make with this. For one thing, "Do it right the first time" should start with the products we sell. We ought to be selling the best there is. The better the product, the less likely it is the customer will have a problem with it.

Second, a variation on the golden rule comes into play here: give people the kinds of things that you would like to have.

When we sell a customer what we feel good about, he ends up with what he needs, which means we have done our job right.

You know you're on the right track... when customers start expecting you to get it right every time. You want them to take that for granted.

More To Come