Archive for the 'success factors' Category

Posted by: David Naylor | 18.07.2008

In the 1930s, GM was in deep trouble as the Century’s worst recession devastated demand and profitability.They were on the verge of closing Cadillac.  But Nicholas Dreystadt said he had a plan to make Cadillac profitable in eighteen months, Depression or no Depression. The first part of his plan resulted from an observation he had made travelling around the country to the service departments of Cadillac dealerships. Cadillac was after the “prestige market,” and part of its strategy to capture that market was its refusal to sell to blacks. Despite this official discrimination, Dreystadt had noted that an astonishing number of customers at the service departments consisted of members of the nation’s tiny black elite: the boxers, singers, doctors, and lawyers who earned large incomes despite the flourishing Jim Crow atmosphere of the 1930s. Most status symbols were not available to these people. They couldn’t live in fancy neighborhoods or patronize fancy nightclubs. But getting around Cadillac’s policy of refusing to sell was easy: They just paid white men to front for them.

Dreystadt urged the executive committee to go after this market. Why should a bunch of white front men get several hundred dollars each when that profit could flow to General Motors? The board bought his reasoning, and in 1934 Cadillac sales increased by 70 percent, and the division actually broke even. In June 1934 Nick Dreystadt was made head of the Cadillac Division.

He proceeded to revolutionize the way luxury cars were made. “Quality is design and tooling,” he said, “inspection and service; it is not inefficiency.” He was willing to spend money on superior design and better machine tools. He was willing to spend even more on quality control and top-notch service departments. He was not willing to spend money on production itself.

“Nick made us look closely at everything,” one Cadillac executive remembered. “If someone else made a part for two dollars, why did ours have to cost three or four?” In less than three years of this attitude at the top, Cadillac’s production costs were no higher, per unit, than those of General Motors’ low-end Chevrolets.

And because Cadillac still sold for luxury prices despite its drastically reduced production costs, it had become General Motors’ most profitable car per unit. In still-depressed 1937 more Cadillacs were sold than in roaring 1928. 

Jonathan Wilson

Strategy, automotive, process improvement, quality, segmentation, success factors | No Comments

Posted by: David Naylor | 11.10.2007

ISPs frustrate me. First, the IT support process requires you to quote usernames and passwords (which are a non-configurable jumble of letters and numbers) in every email you send to them. Why would I want to contact Fasthosts if they weren’t my service provider? I think 99.9999% of us have better things to do than get assistance from another ISP - which is bound to be technically flawed anyway.

Second, several of us in Budd are now using Blackberry’s and judging by the numbers of people sending email on the train this morning, so is half the business world. So why does Fasthost insist on not supporting them? My support question this morning asked why they didn’t, when they would and should I take my business elsewhere? The response was pilot but completely missed the point. “We have no plans to support Blackberry but contact us if you need anything else”. No I don’t need anything else, I want Blackberry support!!!

This sensitivity to the situation is often missing from the customer experience process. How often do you end up being told “sorry we can’t do that here, you’ll have to call another number” or similar, and then be asked “but is there anything else I can help you with today?”, is a ludicrous and blindingly stupid approach to the customer experience.

Awareness of and sensitivity towards the customer frustrations have been squeezed out of many call centres by performance management approaches. We see this more and more as we implement WOCAS and train the front line. We spend more time on the awareness part than we do on using the tools and need to support for them for some time afterwards to embed the habit of spotting the frustrations (and logging them).

As ever, changing behaviours is far more critical than just changing the process or tools.

WOCAS, customer experience design, success factors | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 14.03.2007

I’m the thick of the conference season and awards judging now so I get to see a lot of stuff in a short space of time. In particular lots about major transformation programmes in order to build great staff and customer experiences. So whilst chairing the National Customer Services Awards presentations yesterday I made a few notes from the past month.

The common success factors in building great customer and people businesses
1) Leadership built on uncompromising values (take a look at first direct’s or Google Inc’s in our libraryat www.budd.uk.com). They give absolute clarity and simplicity in their challenge and vision such that anyone can understand. To build absolute clarity and buy in that it is worth spending substantially to drive a customer based strategy.

2) Ask the customers – nearly always the first step in creating awareness of dissatisfaction, and what to fix first and with what importance. It usually requires experiential learning as well so internal people “get it”.

3) Ask the frontline staff – they usually know what ought to be done to achieve the challenge – this is at the heart of change working well . The leader doesn’t ask what changes to make, but sets out clearly where they’re going and consults extensively on how people think they can get the business there. He/she explains why some ideaas aren’t feasible, and why some things are chosen. He/she uses this to set up continuous processes for this kind of consultation and listening in order to “change the change” later

4) Support the change with the right resources and training– so each person feels equipped to do the new things. Frontline management and middle management usually need more training and coaching than frontline staff. They need to know how to coach rather than critique

5) Make sure each person has time to do the job the new way, taking account of the fact that “its not something else on top of what you do, it’s the new way you do it”. Adequate resource planning means people can do a great job

6) Support the change by measuring different things differently. Measure individuals on things they can affect, not the things they cant

7) The timescales are much sharper than would be first seen as reasonable – after the plan has been formulated, not before. It takes a long time to consult and communicate and that shouldnt be cut short if the change is to be sustainable

Massive amounts of formal and informal communication – the comms plan is as big as the project plan

9) Proper planning & review – not next step planning. Consumption planning – ie planning at the rate of change a person can absorb. Communications planning. Project planning and stakeholder support comes thro in every conference as a key factor. Project managers don’t have the necessary change skills and need training in many cases

10) Back to leaders and managers – stamina of vision. Each decisions made all along the way stick to the values and vision. Any deviation introduces cynicism.

Jonathan Wilson who heads up our human factors practice ( “you build it, I’ll get them to use it”) has some great methodologies for change so get in touch if you’d like to discuss the change you’re embarking on

customer experience, success factors | No Comments