Friday, August 12, 2011

Once you start seeing waste you can't stop

Sometime I wish I could turn off and not see the waste around me or the waste I am experiencing.  So often companies set systems up for their convenience and not for ours the customers.  If I sound like I'm on a whinging a lot recently I apologize. 
Direct Energy put a lot of effort into advertising their service offerings.  In every bill they send out a brochure advertising their services and the latest deals they have.  On the back of the brochure is the phone number to ring.  Except that phone number goes straight into the Direct Energy main automated switch board.  So I go from wanting to place an order to having to navigate my way through a menu system.
The only value to me in the call is to say I want to book a service and this is my address which takes maybe a minute.  In truth the majority of the call I spent doing other things and didn't end up placing an order.  I count three different wastes (delay, movement/queuing & lost opportunity) all squeezed into my call.

Service wastes:
·  1. Delay on the part of customers
·  2. Duplication. Having to re-enter data…
·  3. Unnecessary Movement. Queuing several times
·  4. Unclear communication,.
·  5. Incorrect inventory.
·  6. An opportunity lost to retain or win customers, a failure to establish rapport
·  7. Errors in the service transaction,

 If Direct Energy looked at the process from the customer viewpoint I wonder how it would look.  Would there be one lovely phone number that took my straight to right sales/booking person, and what would the call completion rate look like?

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