Articles on winning and keeping customers abound on the Internet. They generally focus on achieving and maintaining “customer service excellence“. They talk a lot about tactics but miss the strategic aspects of customer satisfaction and retention.

What drives your customer service (aka, customer relationships), anyway? Your company policy, of course. Your mission and vision drive your overall company policy, in which you lay out your overall objectives that guide your strategic plan. From there come your sales and marketing plans, your operational plans, and so forth. You might think of your policy as a juncture of internal and external forces.

So, why do I bring up this subject? An article appeared last week on “Mashable” that makes a very good point about the importance of a strong, well-written company policy to your customer relationships.  This article explains why no one reads privacy policies, and they cite Facebook and others as examples.

Why don’t customers read privacy policies? The article has several answers, including:

• The longest privacy policy of the “top 1,000″ websites takes 45 minutes to read at 244 wpm⁽¹⁾; and
• The average of the privacy policies cited takes about 10 minutes to read.

It’s not just privacy policies, of course — it’s every kind of policy. They’re lengthy, full of confusing verbiage, and put off their audience. They do neither the company nor its customers any good. So, why are wordy, obtuse policies (in “nanofonts”) foisted on customers?

• In the modern business environment, legal departments owe their employers a duty to protect them. Unfortunately, this is often interpreted to mean “let’s cover every contingency we can think of”. Clarity is invariably sacrificed for thorough attention to detail.
• Modern culture seems to have promoted discord, vitriol, and revenge over cooperation, conciliation, and harmony. I don’t know where this warrior mentality worked its way into business but being humble and nice is now a sign of weakness. This line of thinking leads companies to draw in and protect rather than be exposed to danger.
• Companies seem to prefer “customer acquisition” over “cultivating relationships”. They need (or they prefer) the quick payoff rather than the slow-and-sure.

What’s most puzzling is that the last issue persists even though the need for short-term profits is what largely brought about the current global economic recession. When will we learn?

If a company had as one of its stated purposes “to reduce customer goodwill and retention”, they still couldn’t do a better job of driving people to look for alternatives than by writing bad policy. Badly conceived, poorly written company policy is avoidable; well-written policy is a necessity.

“So, what is a well-written policy?”, you ask. It’s a policy that’s:

• Clear;
• Concise;
• Direct;
• Easy to comprehend;
• Not written to its audience but written with that audience foremost in mind; and
• Written with SMART objectives behind it.

What’s your company policy? Does everyone understand it? Does it help your customer relationships? Call or write and let’s talk policy.

As always, thank you for your time.

* * * * * * *

⁽¹⁾Font type and size have something to do with that figure, as do the complex wording and convoluted syntax common to “legalese”. Naturally, we read faster and retain more of some documents than others (Novels v. Contracts, for example). I recommend checking out these sites and others for more information on reading speed:

• TurboRead - http://www.turboread.com/interpretation.htm.
• Speed Reading Center - http://www.speedreadingcenter.com/average-reading-speed/.
• Free Speed Reading - http://www.free-speed-reading.com/articles/what-is-the-average-reading-speed-of-americans.

Recently, I was looking for a new camera. I was researching various models when I came across a few websites that listed them at unbelievable prices! Excited but skeptical, I dug down more and discovered these websites were shady, at best. That is, something gave me the impression they weren’t entirely trustworthy. I settled on a site with an established reputation — Amazon.com — and purchased the model I liked for what I thought was a fair price.

I’ve been buying online for a number of years. And, regardless of the current state of the economy, more and more people are buying online, too. According to one estimate, 60% of consumers shop online at least once quarterly.

As most of us are becoming more familiar, and comfortable, with purchasing from websites — as our numbers continue to grow — questionable or outright illegal selling practices are also on the rise. How do we know that the websites we’re buying from are legitimate?

Here are a few things you can check for before you make the decision to buy from any website.

1. Detailed Information

One of the most obvious signs of a website’s sincerity and competence is easy availability of information. Unless you have something to hide, there’s no reason to skimp on such things as detailed product descriptions, delivery information, pricing, and even company information — the company’s history, physical location, and a variety of ways (names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, etc.) of contacting someone at the company.

A somewhat important, but often overlooked, detail is a website’s “whois” domain registration information, on registrar sites like Godaddy or Network Solutions. Most of the shady websites I encountered had their domain owner information masked under private registrations.

Always feel free to email or call the company to get an idea about their business practices or customer service standards. See if you get hold of a “real” person or if you’re just sent to voicemail.

2. Recognized Brand

Most big-name, well-known online retailers like “Amazon.com” or “Buy.com” are safe bets, as are websites recommended by people you know or the ones  you have previously bought from (and didn’t have any complaints about). I say “most” because in rare instances, a third-party crook could be enticing you to visit a make-believe website simply to steal (or “phish”) your information.

Make sure that the address bar of your browser always begins with “http://subdomain.name-of-the-retailer.com”, where “subdomain” is “www”, “store”, or something similar. Avoid shopping from websites that have an IP (internet protocol) address — usually four sets of numbers — following the “http://” in the address bar (e.g., “http://123.456.789.012/”).

3. Encrypted Data – Secure Transaction

When you shop from a website, all information you enter (like your contact and credit card information) are transferred from your computer to their web server. You want this transfer to be encrypted and secure. That’s what the SSL (secured socket layer) certificates do, so that a third-party cannot easily “eavesdrop” on your transaction and steal your personal information.

There are two ways to ensure that a website has SSL certificate installed. First, look for “https://” in the address bar, especially when you’re in the area of the website where you’re asked for sensitive information, like the shopping cart checkout.

Second, look for a padlock icon either on the address bar or towards the bottom right of the webpage. Many sites also use logos of SSL providers. Feel free to click on those logos to verify proper encryption.

4. Clean Record – Assurance is the Key

Other things to look for are the company’s record. Check to see if the company is a member of the local Better Business Bureau. If it is, you can check for any complaints against the company and, if there were, how they handled those situations.

Also look for website reviews online. Keep in mind that sometimes these reviews can be skewed by a small number of dissatisfied customers, or jealous competitors, but look for the reviews themselves to see if they’re consistently good or bad. Consistently poor reviews indicate potential problems or a pattern of misbehavior within the company.

5. Customer Satisfaction Is Our Primary Goal

Safe shopping at Bizmanualz.com

Here at Bizmanualz, we’re mindful of the concerns our customers have about online shopping. We are proud of, and deeply thankful for, the trust thousands of customers have bestowed upon us over the 15-plus years we’ve been in business. We adhere to strict website security standards and take your privacy very seriously. Shoppers recognize this and, as a result, customers from around the world visit our website, view our samples,and buy our products.

We’d love to hear from you about your online shopping experiences, both negative and positive. Also, if you have any questions or comments about our own online security standards, please feel free to call us at 314-863-5079, contact us online, or leave a comment.

Thank you, and happy holidays!

Customers demand consistency — they need it to make informed purchase decisions.  We’ll start with an example: Let’s say you run a restaurant.  At your restaurant, you have a different chef every day. Each chef makes the menu according to their preferences.

If your menu changes every day — if there’s a high degree of variability — most customers will be put off. Some people like variety and go out of their way for it, but most of us are creatures of habit. We find something we like and we stick with it; we go where we know what we’re getting. If we don’t know what to expect from you, you may not be in business for long.

It’s generally not good business to let your employees make your products any way they want, whether your product is hamburgers, tires, or remote data backup. Too much variation, or inconsistency, in your product will hurt your business.

Consistency with quality means value, and value means happy customers. Happy customers will return, and they’ll tell their friends. who will tell their friends, and they’ll grow your business.

If yours is like most companies in these difficult times, you’re struggling. Every employee reacts to their own problems and can’t be bothered with others. Furthermore, no one has the time or “luxury” to look ahead, let alone ensure consistency in the here-and-now.  The result is a decline in quality, revenues, morale, and…the number of employees.

You can do something about this! Work towards improving consistency in your work first.  Good management looks ahead, plans for the future, defines the “product”, and develops measurable objectives, active job descriptions, and clearly defined policies and procedures.

Consistency equals quality, doesn’t it? Not necessarily. You can make a consistently bad product, which obviously isn’t good for your business.  You need to make a consistently good product, which ISO 9001 — specifically, a quality management system designed around the ISO 9001 quality standard — can help you produce.

Quality management works toward delivering a consistent product, inside and out. Unless everyone in your business is doing everything they can to deliver a consistent product internally, you won’t see consistency in your finished products. Be a leader and deliver consistent products consistently. If you deliver high quality consistently, everything else takes care of itself.

Chris Anderson, Managing Director of Bizmanualz, recently posted on the Top 10 Quality Gurus. Those of us in the quality disciplines all know about these people: Shewhart, Deming, Juran, Crosby, Ishikawa, Taguchi, and many others laid a solid foundation for quality practices in the 21st century and beyond. Some of us, I’m sure, can recite ISO 9001 from memory, but memorizing the minutiae isn’t as important as “getting it” — applying the principles of quality to our business and personal lives.

Quality is one of the keys to success in any discipline. Though we may use different terminology, it’s clear who gets quality. There are people who get it, who successfully apply the tenets of quality to what they do in life — people who make everyone around them better without having to know a thing about Six Sigma, ISO 9001, or Lean. Some examples are:

1. Yogi Berra, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” How many of us have been through a grueling project — like working toward ISO 9001 certification — and, once we reached our goal, said, “Now that we have that out of the way…”? Once your quality management system has been certified, it ain’t over.  There’s no such thing as the perfect QMS — that’s why a major goal is to keep improving. Yogi kept improving his game, all right. You know how many other MLB players have 10 World Series rings?  Zero.

2. Ichiro Suzuki, “In baseball, even the best hitters fail seven of ten times and of those seven failures, there are different reasons why”. Ichiro was referring to a time-honored measure of success in baseball, the .300 batting average. Ichiro has batted over .300 every year he’s been in the American major league. Between Japan and the U.S., he could retire with over 4,000 hits, a plateau only two before him (Cobb and Rose) have reached.

3. Jackie Robinson. “Thinking about the things that happened, I don’t know any other ball player who could have done what he did. To be able to hit with everybody yelling (racial slurs) at him. He had to block all that out, block out everything but this ball that is coming in at a hundred miles an hour. To do what he did has got to be the most tremendous thing I’ve ever seen in sports.” Shortstop and Dodgers’ teammate Harold “Pee Wee” Reese, on Jackie. Enough said.

4. Archie Moore, “If I don’t get off the mat, I’ll lose the fight.” In 234 recorded boxing matches over a span of 30 years, the Old Mongoose won nearly 200, 145 by knockout! He also failed to win more than 30 of his matches. Mr. Moore even won a light-heavyweight match at age 50! Archie Moore personified dedication and dogged persistence, qualities that separate winners from also-rans in business, too.

5. Steven Spielberg. “All of us every single year, we’re a different person. I don’t think we’re the same person all our lives.” Has there been a better expression of the concept of change. Always thinking, always moving forward — that’s why Spielberg is considered one of the best ever at his craft.

6. Miles Davis. “Do not fear mistakes…there are none.” Miles was one of the most innovative composers and arrangers of jazz, a musical genre known for innovation. He was continually reinventing what he did and staying at the forefront, from cool jazz to fusion. Nearly every one of Miles’s albums, from the 1940′s “Birth of the Cool” to the 1980′s “Aura”, represented a landmark in the progression of music.

7. “Dizzy” Gillespie. “I always try to teach by example and not force my ideas on a young musician.” Known as one of the founding fathers of bebop, Dizzy was also a proponent of Afro-Cuban music, decades before “world music” became popular. Never content to rest on his laurels, he was still inventing new ways of expressing himself through music at the time of his death.

8. Wayne Gretzky. “You miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.” The Great One’s career shot percentage was a mere 17.6%; to put it another way, he missed over 82% of the time. Still, Gretzky holds every single-season and career scoring record in the history of the National Hockey League. Just goes to show that you don’t get anywhere by standing around and waiting for something to happen.

9. James Madison. “The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.” Madison felt power ought to be distributed among the people, so he (and many nameless others) developed the U.S. Constitution to assure a balance of power. They had the foresight — the vision — to craft a document which is still the model for sound government more than two centuries later.

10. Dwight D. Eisenhower. “You don’t lead by hitting people over the head. That’s assault, not leadership.” Field Marshal Montgomery, thought not to be one of Ike’s biggest fans, once said, “He has the power of drawing the hearts of men toward him as a magnet attracts the bit of metal. He merely has to smile at you, and you trust him at once.” That’s saying a lot when someone who doesn’t care for you still respects your abilities.

Of course this isn’t the definitive list of The Top 10 Leaders Not in Quality. I don’t believe any of them ever thought they were perfect, which is why they continually worked on improving themselves. These are ten people who represented quality in what they did or how they lived. They’re living evidence that quality is all around us.

Not every quality guru is in the field of quality. Who represents quality to you? Why? Are they people you know personally?

Remember when Ford’s tagline was “Quality Is Job 1″? No? Well, maybe this will jog your memory.

Back in the 1980′s, Ford, GM, Chrysler, and AMC¹ were quickly losing ground to Japanese automakers². Rumors that U.S. auto workers were deliberately sabotaging cars on assembly lines gained traction; these rumors were alleged to have been started to divert attention from the obvious and growing inequities between American and Japanese vehicles.

Fact is, American car buyers were turning away from domestic cars simply because their Asiatic counterparts were cheaper to buy and much cheaper to operate. The bad reputation American cars were saddled with then — a consumer perception of poor quality — persists to this day, even though Toyota — which leapfrogged all American automakers in 2007 to become the world’s #1 vehicle producer precisely because of its reputation for quality — has turned out to be the modern-day emperor with no clothes.  It looks as though quality took a back seat to profits.

Then there’s BP, whose failed wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico “will live in infamy”³, mainly because it appears the company would not spend a little on safety because that might eat into profits. This story has been thoroughly covered in the news, on blogs (including ours), and in company emails.

Now add the computer maker Dell to the list. Dell is now in court for allegedly selling millions of defective computers from 2003-2005 — computers that it supposedly knew were defective — hurting companies that relied on its reputation for quality manufacturing and customer service.

What’s the common thread running through all of these cases? Corporate hubris? Maybe.  A message running throughout these companies that “quality be damned — just get it out fast and make a big profit”? Quite possibly. Is their profit more important to you — the consumer – than a quality product and your satisfaction?

When do we, as consumers, demand that quality be placed before price? It catches up with the producer — eventually — but why wait for the inevitable? Why chase the elusive promise of “newer and better”? (Look at what Apple’s going through with the iPhone 4.)^{4, 5} Also, when do we, as corporate citizens, begin to see that our responsibility to give our customers quality isn’t incompatible with healthy profits?

It’s often said that we get what we deserve. If you think you deserve better, demand — and hold out for — quality.

Notes:

¹ Yes, they were still around, though not for long. AMC was put down for good in 1988.

² Except for body rust; that problem plagued Japanese auto makers for decades. My first two new vehicles were Japanese-made and I logged 18 years and several hundred thousand miles between them. If not for the severe case of “car cancer” they both caught, I believe they would’ve given me 20 or more years, combined.

³ My apologies to the late Franklin D. Roosevelt only.

⁴ http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/apple-iphone-hit-class-action-suit/story?id=11066239.

⁵ http://news.cnet.com/8301-30677_3-20008919-244.html.

Further Reading/Viewing:

1. Enderle, Rob, “Dell and the Cost of Cover-Ups“, IT Business Edge post, 30 Jun 2010.
2. Evans, Joel, “Is Apple Covering Up the Real Problem with Its iPhone?“, ZDNet blog post, 4 July 2010.
3. “Product Recalls“, Back in Black, The Daily Show, 6 July 2010.

One way to be sure to eliminate a problem for good is to identify the root cause and eliminate it. In the world of quality, we have this easy to use tool for getting to the root cause of a problem.

The “Five Whys”, simply put, means you state the problem and keep asking why until you’ve identified the root cause. However, using the Five Whys means the problem has occurred. Isn’t it better to prevent the problem from happening than correct it after the fact? Preventive action is infinitely preferable to corrective action.

I’ll give you a “for instance”. Someone I know recently left a wireless provider she’d been with for several years. What upset her most was that when she canceled, the customer service rep (CSR) didn’t ask why she was leaving. She might have reacted positively if the CSR had offered her an incentive to stay but he didn’t, and she’d pretty much made up her mind by then that they weren’t worthy.

If you can’t give somebody a reason to stay all along, your problems aren’t going to be magically solved by root cause analysis or any other corrective action tools. A root cause analysis may help you solve your problem, but why let the problem happen in the first place? Why not head off the problem? Take an active interest in your customers, rather than sit back and wait for things to happen.

Most customers will walk away from you without complaining. They don’t announce that they’re taking their business elsewhere: they just do it. They don’t give you a chance to explain yourself because they feel like they’ve been let down all along.

Dissatisfaction isn’t the result of a one-time occurrence. It happens over a period of time.  If, from the outset, communication is poor or nonexistent, the foundation for customer dissatisfaction is being laid. If you don’t continue to make your customer feel valued and welcome, the relationship that might have been never is.

Next, I’ll be looking for an answer to the question, “Why don’t customers complain?”, and I’m asking for your help. Are you more likely to complain to your vendors, or do you keep quiet and look for an alternative right away? What if you don’t have an alternative? What do you do then?

Thanks for your insights, and best wishes.

We had a customer ask us this week about obtaining “ASO certification”. Here, in a nutshell, is what we said in reply:

“We’re unfamiliar with ‘ASO’ certification (one of my cohorts “googled” the acronym and didn’t think any of the results fit, so we assumed they meant “ISO” – if we’re wrong, we’ll hear about it). However, if a company wants to obtain ‘ISO’ certification, it has to do the following:

1. Develop a quality management system (QMS);
2. Implement the QMS and collect data;
3. Review the data collected and use it to drive improvement;
4. After several cycles of the QMS, you should have an indication of whether it’s working. When you’re sure it is…
5. Apply for a certification audit.  Your country’s ISO member body should have information on certifying bodies, registrars, etc.;
6. A few weeks after you’ve been through the audit, the certication auditor will tell you if you passed (or if you didn’t, where you were weak and need improvement). If you passed, ring the bell! Have a party! Tell all your friends (Facebook and real), family, and business associates! Your Quality Management System is now ISO certified! And…
7. In the event you didn’t pass, make the necessary changes (at the bare minimum) and reapply for a certification audit.

One thing we didn’t tell the customer initially is, “Don’t have unrealistic expectations.” Developing and utilizing the QMS — as well as the subsequent audit — are going to take time and effort.

If you’re doing it purely for marketing’s sake, if you think you can knock out a QMS and pass a certification audit in a matter of months…you’re in for a load of grief. You’ll never get a solid QMS under you AND you’ll never make deadlines, because they’re unrealistic.

If you build a QMS because you want to provide your customers with the best everything — if customers are the reason for everything you do, including the QMS – you’ll take the time you need to get it right, you won’t set unrealistic goals and deadlines, and you won’t drive yourself crazy trying to figure out why you never meet expectations.

OK, so they’re not really easy steps…but the concept itself isn’t at all complicated. Each of the steps above is broken down into successively smaller pieces (things, activities, people, etc.) but if you start with the “big picture” and keep the big picture handy, you’ll do fine. Refer to it continually as you build. That’s where a lot of companies go wrong — they focus on just one part of the whole story as if that were the whole story, like the blind men and the elephant.

Keep your perspective. Remember — you’re in it for the long haul.  Best of luck in your QMS journey, and let us know if you’d like our help.

Let’s face facts. Most companies are never going to be innovators, and that’s fine. Most would rather lead their respective categories, anyway, and they lead by doing most of the important things — all coming under the heading of “customer needs and wants” — consistently better than their competitors.

What are the important things? Give your customers what they want (which varies from one customer to the next but can be lumped into one category, “value”). Give it to them when they want it and don’t make excuses.

Value translates to “quality”, which you can give a customer from the outset if you’re lucky. Anyone can get it right at least once but what most of us call “quality” comes about only through establishing consistency in a process. And consistency can only be determined over time.

So, how do you ensure consistency? Keep working at the process. Keep refining it. Implement “best practices”.  This will, at best, let you “keep up with the Joneses” (and Toyodas and Fords, etc.).

What if keeping up isn’t good enough? Yes, the silver medal is nice but wouldn’t gold…or platinum…be even better? How do you get ahead of the pack? How do you differentiate yourself in a way that really matters?

Well, what’s the difference between a company that successfully meets or exceeds most stated customer requirements — again, not a bad place to be — and companies that go beyond the known and measurable? The difference is marked by a willingness not to be defined — or confined — by conventional thinking. Innovators don’t think a subject to death: they act decisively.

Of course, they get it wrong a lot of the time but they don’t fret about their mistakes. They learn from them, and they keep moving.

Sure, “mistake-proofing” has its rewards. Mistake-proofed organizations are more certain, they’re more measurable, and they’re often profitable. Innovative companies aren’t afraid of mistakes, because they know that’s how we learn best, as companies and as individuals.

In fact, it’s when we get into a “rut” of consistency that we often lose our gift for innovating. Consistency is not necessarily better than creativity, and vice versa. Consistency and creativity need not be mutually exclusive, either…so we’d like to think. After all, innovation and change can go hand in hand. What do you think?

Can innovation and “best practices” coexist?

* * * * * * *

For More On This Subject…

• “How to Kill Innovation: Keep Asking Questions”, by Scott Anthony, HBR Blog Network (25 Feb 2010) – http://blogs.hbr.org/anthony/2010/02/want_to_kill_innovation_keep_a.html
• “Does Repeat Collaboration Really Kill Creativity?”, by Andrew O’Connell, HBR Blog Network (1 Mar 2010) – http://blogs.hbr.org/research/2010/03/if-repeat-collaboration-kills.html

Thanks to recent reports across all media (ex., “Toyota’s Slow Awakening to a Deadly Problem“, 1 Feb 2010), we’re beginning to see the enormous scope of the acceleration error that has prompted the recall of millions of Toyota vehicles.

Toyota, a company long considered a paragon of lean manufacturing virtue (hence, its assuming the mantle of “World’s Largest Car Maker” from GM), appears to have a serious defect in many of its highest-selling products. “Unintended acceleration” has resulted in hundreds of accidents (reported so far) and the loss of untold lives. In the last two weeks, Toyota shut down the production lines of some of its most popular vehicles to address the situation.

Could it be, as some have suggested, that Toyota has been “hoist with (its) own petard”? Or, to put it another way, was Toyota done in by the very system designed to make it efficient and prosperous?

Just today (1 Feb 2010), Toyota “officially” announced it had found a way to correct the problem (one that goes beyond replacing or doctoring floor mats), but many people aren’t satisfied the manufacturing giant has found the real solution. And even if it has, it will be a long, long time before Toyota recovers from the damage it has done to its reputation.

Questions abound, including “Why didn’t Toyota conduct a thorough investigation when it first learned of the problem (back in 2007?)”, “Why did the company stay with the ‘floor mat’ explanation for so long?”, and “Why didn’t safety bodies (like the NHTSA) do more when they realized there was a problem?”

Toyota’s TPS system appears to be in need of a corrective action — the question is, “Where?” Is the problem in manufacturing only? Customer service? Marketing? Design & development? Outsourcing? Or, did Toyota get too big for its own good?

Toyota’s not the only organization incriminated in this scenario. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration doesn’t come out of this situation unbloodied and unbowed. There are allegations that it could have and should have done more to keep the defect, whatever its root cause, from getting out of control.

In a half-hearted defense of NHTSA, they appear to have been ahead of many of their counterparts around the globe. Recalls in Europe and elsewhere followed the recalls in the US. Furthermore, every government body is hurting. There isn’t anything they don’t need — the authority to inspect and recall, or enforce laws; more people; more training; and a degree of autonomy, so they’re not called on the carpet (truly, no pun intended) for doing their job.

No amount of corrective action, though, can begin to make up for the people who’ve already lost their lives. (Interesting how in a situation like this, we tend to say, “Lives were lost needlessly“, when the opposite is true. Too many times, lives have to be lost — often in numbers — before action is taken.)

Lessons we might take from this at this “early” stage? One: corporate management is increasingly susceptible to hubris as a company grows.   Maybe Toyota was afflicted with the same disease financial services caught — we haven’t seen a problem in so long, they must all be licked. Not that corporate “attitude” is the root cause of Toyota’s problem, or even a proximate cause, but the “floor mat” story should have given us all pause to reflect.

Two: nothing can completely take the place of testing and inspection. We have safety standards, regulations, etc., in place in the aerospace and food businesses. For better or worse, more is on the way. Why not make the automotive world jump similar hurdles (i.e., make safety mandatory)?

Three: the best designed, most rigorous systems eventually come apart when they’re not paid attention. CAPAs, like anything else in your Quality Management System, have to be applied continually in order for your company and your system to improve. Toyota has said it in so many ways: “Satisfactory” isn’t.

So, what happened? Your ideas?

(P.S. – Not like Toyota needed more bad news, but now they have a braking problem on the newest Prius. What do you think of that?)

This week, I responded to an e-mail from a Bizmanualz reader who asked the simple question: How do we get to best practices faster? They wanted to know how best to use our products and services to address feedback from their sales department — that their processes are too long and, therefore, hamper sales. Bizmanualz will engage to whatever extent suits a customer’s need and budget. There are three options to choose from:

1. Buy whatever of our published products that you think you need or that we might recommend;
2. Start with our introductory process optimization services (outlined below); or
3. Buy the CEO series and contact me to buy two days of training to help you get started on your own.

Get coaching and personal service with our process review (option #2). Current pricing is shown in our shopping cart. Contact me for this service:

Review your current process. What are you doing now, and what do you want to improve? Here, we clarify your current work process so that we can measure improvement.

Compare your current process to Bizmanualz best-practice processes. No need to re-create processes when we already have them. We will update your processes to our best practices, saving you the trouble and expense of doing it yourself. Streamlined process maps are simple to understand and easy to implement.

Define the goals of your improvement and provide a roadmap for implementing change. Some example improvement goals:

1. Simplify the process so that they will be used by employees;
2. Increase the number of sales leads from the level identified in the current state; and/or
3. Increase the number of leads converting to sales or other desirable actions, such as signing up for a newsletter, obtaining a sample product, or requesting contact.

When you employ Bizmanualz to lead your improvement project, we customize a process for you from our extensive library of best-practice processes. Best practices are included. This saves you time and money on research and development. Our approach is to identify incremental improvements that involve and can be sustained by your current staff. Improvements are realistic, achievable, and sustainable so they’re achieved consistently and benefits add up fast.

Process Implementation Phase

I’ve described the process review engagement where the scope and pace of improvement is set.  Implementing the improvements is the next phase.

In the follow-on process implementation phase, Bizmanualz processes are delivered in all the formats — with the checklists and forms — that your people will use to follow through and practice the improvement. For the do-it-yourself-er, most of the process map formats and examples discussed here are described in a recent Bizmanualz article and commentary series, starting with “What is a Process Map?“.

A Bizmanualz quality consultant, with supporting quality engineers, writers, and communications professionals, will customize maps, job aids, and other tools for your project.  Read about the types of process maps and other tools we deliver on our site. The do-it-yourself-er can also read about project management tools and use them to manage their own project.

Anyone can comb through our manuals-product web site and select individual policies, procedures, and forms manuals or they can choose collections such as the CEO Company Policies and Procedures set.  Most CEO Series customers will benefit from a day or two of training and review, where we’ll introduce your employees to the books and tools in the CEO series and show them how to get started.

Contact me, Dan Davison, for more information about training to use the CEO series product.  Do you have comments? How can we help? Please write to me directly, or leave your comments below.

Thank you.