At the heart of your improvement plan should be a strategy.  Rendered maps can help you visually represent that strategy.  You need to paint an attractive picture — show a positive future, show the outcome that people will buy into.

We illustrated a strategy of faster turnaround for aircraft overhauls. It was simple. Workers could easily see how the changes being asked of them would result in good outcomes.

We helped an aircraft overhaul facility, or MRO, cut the time required for major service on aircraft overhauls.  Less time in the shop means operators get their planes back in service faster which, in turn, means they make money instead of spending it.  That helped the aircraft overhaul facility garner a competitive advantage.

We mapped process flows and activities throughout the company; for example, how materials were specified, requisitioned, and tracked.  With our process maps, the client saw how small changes would flow through the system and have a big impact.

Had you asked department managers at the time, they would have told you they were already aware of most of the improvement opportunities that we identified. Certainly, the inefficiencies had been there for years, managers would have said. And point solutions had been identified in some cases.

But the eventual impact of small changes was unclear or unknown, so it was hard for them to justify the time and resources needed to effect change.  So, improvement flagged.

Lighting a fire for change meant we had to change minds.  We illustrated an improvement story that showed certain small changes having a big impact.  Using rendered maps, we illustrated the strategy that was easy to buy into.  We also illustrated a number of systemic improvements that would help sustain the improvements.

Show the Positive Future and Give People a Reason to Change

For example, we selected and illustrated how highly skilled mechanics were spending time and many footsteps getting parts.  Everyone understood that if a wrench doesn’t turn, the plane doesn’t move, and turnaround suffers.

This rendered process map shows mechanics' walk and wait times in the current state. Inefficiency and waste are readily apparent.

In the future state, we instead showed parts being delivered to the mechanics:

In contrast to the current state, the future state is much simpler and, therefore, a marked improvement. As a communications device, it leads workers to ask what is required to achieve and sustain the improvement.

It sounds simple, right?  It was simple, and it tied in with the overall strategy of reducing turnaround.  It made it a great story.  Ultimately, it was the story that had been lacking in the past.

The story, told in rendered maps, helped us get the buy-in that was essential to support the many process changes required to sustain change.  How would the runner know what part to deliver to the mechanic?  When would the  part be delivered?  How would chain of custody be maintained?  Many questions arose that, before, simply froze out improvement, but by telling a story for positive change, the hard work of change became tenable.

By virtue of our illustrating specific improvements, people could see exactly how that lofty strategy translated into their daily work lives.  Our story consisted of sufficient current-state and future-state improvement “concrete steps” and examples to show that improvement was, in fact, possible and exactly how the “positive future” of reduced turnaround time could be achieved.

Telling the Improvement Story Is Part of Your Job

Had we stopped at producing the descriptive maps and left it up to the department heads to structure an improvement program, they surely would have made some incremental improvements in their system.  However, their efforts would have lacked urgency and sustainability.  Change would not have happened fast enough to outpace the industry.  Hungry competitors would not have been overtaken, and no sustainable competitive advantage would have been achieved.

But it was achieved.  As we learned, it’s part of our job as leaders to tell the improvement story. Rendered maps are a tool for telling stories of positive change. Fact-based, tangible, visual stories can illustrate a positive future, and should be in your process mapping toolkit. So, tell the story. Complete the improvement journey. Use a map.

Go Beyond Customer Surveys and Complaints

These methods can provide useful information, but they also have serious limitations when it comes to capturing what customers really want.  It can take a lot of effort to truly understand the meaning behind survey responses and complaints.

Being proactive in hearing, and most importantly, understanding the voice of the customer means more than just having customers complete surveys and then compile results.  It can take more than statistics to really understand what customers want or mean.

Let’s review a couple of well-known examples of how taking time to understand the meaning behind complaints and feedback can lead to simple solutions that have a dramatic impact on customer satisfaction.

Are Expected Complaints Acceptable?

Most of us have been to large amusement parks and had to wait in long lines for rides.  One well-known amusement park carefully monitored customer feedback, and the most frequent complaint was the long wait for rides.  This complaint was ignored for a long time, however, because it was expected that people would complain about lines and because there didn’t seem to be a reasonable solution.  Building duplicate rides to reduce waiting times wasn’t feasible.  Making the ride operation more efficient had limitations and a minimal impact on waiting times.

Eventually, however, a more in-depth investigation into this common complaint was conducted.  It involved asking follow-up questions in order to understand what people didn’t like about the wait.  After all, if people expect to wait in line for rides, why would they complain about it?  So as interviewers tried to determine why people complained about waiting in line, they discovered it wasn’t so much the wait that people didn’t like.  It seemed that people were most bothered by having no idea how long they would have to wait when they joined the queue.  They did not know if it would take 30 minutes or two hours.  Apparently, it was the lack of information about the wait that they didn’t like.

When the amusement park added signs along the queue informing people how long they would have to wait, complaints about waiting in line dropped significantly.  It seems that by having that information, people felt less helpless about the wait, plus they could decide when they arrived at the end of the line if they wanted to wait or go do something else.   Now these waiting time signs are common at most large amusements parks.

Having this information also allowed the parks to “under-promise and over-deliver” as they made extremely conservative estimates about the wait.  Having to wait 45 minutes instead of an hour (as the sign indicated) exceeded the customer’s expectations.

What Are Customers Really Complaining About?

In another case that involves looking for meaning behind the voice of the customer, a developer built a tall skyscraper.  As the project was completed and tenants were moving in, the developer collected feedback from the tenants about the building before closing out the contracts with the various contractors.  He wanted to make sure everything was done properly to satisfactorily meet the tenants’ needs.

After completing an extensive survey of tenants, he was surprised to find one of the most common complaints was slow elevators.  The developer in turn complained to the elevator company.  The elevator company provided the developer with timing statistics to demonstrate that the elevators weren’t really slower than other elevators, but the developer wasn’t convinced.  Eventually the elevator company made some minor adjustments that increased the elevator speed a small degree.

A follow-up survey, however, demonstrated no change.  People still complained about the slow elevators.  The developer began to insist on major, expensive upgrades to the elevator system to make them operate significantly faster.  The elevator company lobbied for some time to study the problem.  They knew their elevators didn’t operate any more slowly than elevators in other buildings, so there must be something else involved.

Observing Customers in Action Provides Important Information

The elevator company hired a behavioral scientist to study the problem.  The behavioral scientist spent a few days at the building riding the elevators and observing people.  The conclusion reached after carefully observing body language, facial expressions, and other behavior was that people were very bored when waiting for and riding on the elevators.  The tenants didn’t seem to realize that they were bored; they just knew it seemed to take forever for elevators to arrive and to deliver them to their desired floor.  So they complained that the elevators were slow.

Instead of spending a large sum of money making the elevators go faster, the elevator company spent a little money installing mirrors inside the elevators, and the developer spent a little money decorating the bare and too-generic lobby area around the elevator bank with paintings, plants, and furniture.  These minor changes  kept people more occupied while waiting for and riding the elevators, thus the slow elevator complaints dropped drastically.

Apparently the behavioral scientist was right.  There was no problem with the elevator speed.  The problem was that the lobby and the elevators were boring, and people were bored when using them.  Being bored made the time drag, thus the “too slow” complaint.

Surveys and Complaints Are Only a Starting Point for Hearing the Voice of the Customer

Not all customer feedback and complaints have hidden meanings.  But they might.  If you take all your customer feedback at face value you could be missing opportunities for breakthrough improvement, or you could invest time and money to fix problems that don’t really exist.

As last week’s article suggests, sometimes you have to find proactive and inventive methods to find out how customers really feel about your product or service.  That might be creating opportunities to rephrase and repeat questions to get a more complete or in-depth picture.  It might be creating opportunities to observe customer behavior and activities.  What works best will depend on the type of organization, the type of customer, and the type of product or service.

You might have opportunities for such activities now.  Is there a recurring complaint you don’t know how to solve?  Are you baffled by particular complaints? (Why would they complain about that?)  These are opportunities to investigate meaning and expand knowledge about the voice of the customer.  A understanding customers is crucial to success and growth.

At Bizmanualz, we see a lot of business owners who confuse their own perception of their value with that of their customers. Frankly, it doesn’t matter what you think of your product or service if your customers’ don’t see it that way.

Creating a Value Strategy for a New MarketAdvanced Tooling Solutions, a Boeing spin-out, had already fabricated and tested a prototype tool that would save automobile manufacturers time and money. But the team was unsure about how to sell into the automobile industry.

Dan, now VP of sales and marketing for Bizmanualz, met with ATS to work on the company’s value proposition—the selling story that describes what value the company is providing its customer. Dan documented the team’s assumptions about the economic challenges of automotive suppliers, thus gauging their presumptions about the problems the new technology would address.

Dan and the team then took the draft value proposition to the automotive manufacturers and suppliers to test the value story’s validity. The team learned that issues varied depending on the position of who they talked to—manufacturers, suppliers, engineers, or marketing executives.

After speaking with the manufacturers, the ATS team realized they needed to aim their story-selling efforts at the suppliers instead. Generally, the automobile manufacturers buy parts, not tools that fabricate parts. The new tool would have to be proven in suppliers’ production lines.

Tell Your Value Story with Specific Customers in Mind

Having gained concrete market intelligence through the process of value proposition testing, Dan and the team could justify shifting the focus of the value story from manufacturers to parts suppliers.

Dan and the ATS team worked with suppliers and were able to test the new technology on actual supplier lines. Discussing the selling story with suppliers, they learned that by saving them time and money, they could differentiate their product in the highly competitive automotive component business. So the team adjusted their selling strategy to stress those cost and flexibility advantages in their selling story.

“We got into this as a technical team,” ATS team leader William Smith said. “Not having made lots of sales calls, we did not understand the selling process. We did not understand what we needed at each step in the sale.”

But as Dan and the team jointly engaged parts makers and automotive executives in discussions around their particular economic situation, the team gained the insight to tailor its sales approach. The focus shifted to be most relevant depending on the perspective of the particular customer.

“Our early pitches had too much information, too many details. And it was confusing for our audience. [Dan] helped us be clear, simplifying on key messages for the audience at hand,” Smith said. “It’s not just about feeling good about a meeting and agreeing to meet again. It’s about actually getting something out of the meeting.”

New Selling Story, New Strategic Growth BusinessNow focused on providing cost and time advantages for leading automotive component suppliers, Advanced Tooling Solutions offered suppliers an opportunity to invest plant time and expertise in a test of the new tooling. Two accepted. The tests helped the tools become qualified for production-rate manufacturing.
The team gained valuable experience on live parts manufacturing lines that will validate the method for rate production and further refine the team’s sales and marketing focus.

If your company is having difficulty entering into a new market, or if you are unsure about the perspective of your customer, creating and testing a value proposition is essential.

For more information about how Bizmanualz can help you create and test a relevant and customer-focused value story, contact us or visit our Value Proposition web page.

Our first challenge was to develop a value proposition for the automotive industry. We documented the team’s assumptions about the economic challenges of automotive suppliers, thus documenting the team’s assumptions about the business pains that the new tooling technology was addressing.

By reviewing the value proposition with automotive manufacturers and suppliers, the team tested its understanding of the operational and economic issues as they existed at the time. The team learned that the issues varied depending on the position of who they talked to—manufacturers, suppliers, engineers or marketing executives.

In meetings with the major automobile manufacturers, it became clear that buy-in for the new tooling approach would have to come from their suppliers of major automotive body panels. Generally, automobile manufacturers buy automotive parts and assemblies, not tools that fabricate parts. The new tool would have to be proven in suppliers’ production lines.

Having gained concrete market intelligence through our process of value proposition testing, we could justify shifting the focus of the team’s value story from manufacturers to parts suppliers.

Our consultant led the team toward getting one or two suppliers to use the tool in suitable production runs. Discussing the value story with suppliers, we learned that small but sustainable cost and schedule advantages could help supplies differentiate themselves in the highly commoditized automotive component business. We therefore stressed the cost and flexibility advantages for suppliers that adopted the new method.

“We got into this as a technical team,” Smith said. “Not having made lots of sales calls, we did not understand the selling process. We did not understand what we needed at each step in the sale.”

But as our consultant and the team jointly engaged parts makers and automotive executives in discussion around their particular economic situation, the team gained the insight needed to tailor its sales approach. The focus shifted to the perspective of the audience.

“Our early pitches had too much information, too many details, and it was confusing for our audience. [The consultant] helped us be clear, simplifying key messages for the audience at hand,” Smith said. “It’s not just about feeling good about a meeting, and agreeing to meet again. It’s about actually getting something out of the meeting.”

Now focused on providing competitive advantage for leading automotive component suppliers, Advanced Tooling Solutions offered suppliers an opportunity to invest plant time and expertise in a test of the new tooling. Two accepted. The tests will help the tools become qualified for production-rate manufacturing.

The team is gaining valuable experience on live parts manufacturing lines that will validate the method for rate production and further refine the team’s sales and marketing focus.

Are you providing sales coaching and tools for your technical teams to succeed with customers? Or, will they become frustrated?

The first step was to define the competencies of the people of infūz. The company had career brand marketers on staff — Katie O’Dell had launched and managed pet food brands as a brand marketer for Nestlé Purina Petcare Company. Software analysts and developers on staff had a range of certifications and experience developing web-based applications. So infūz leveraged its consumer packaged goods experience and focused on developing relationships with marketing and brand executives there.

Our consultant developed a visual summary of the infūz value proposition. Then he and infūz met together with brand executives and marketers to listen to what they liked and didn’t like about their interactive agency relationships. Customers helped us tailor the value proposition by reacting to the story depicted in the sketches.

In interviews, marketing executives said they were unhappy with agencies whose opaque technical and creative approaches seemed disjoined from a brand’s marketing goals. Marketers questioned the value they received for maintenance and retainer fees which seemed disjointed from a brand’s objectives and unrelated to separately billed tactical marketing programs. This “Pain” played nicely to infūz’s marketing experience and technical processes.

From the interviews, our consultant revised the value proposition and tested it with customers. Customer’s dissatisfaction with the typical agency model became apparent. Differentiation strategies emerged. To its credit, infūz allowed the customer’s definition of value to largely drive staffing and technology investments. It became apparent that truly differentiating infūz would require significant investment in people and infrastructure, investments that the company has made.

As value proposition and capabilities came online, we developed sales process and tools to support it. Our consultant and the principals of infūz used the tools to bring in early sales and flesh out the sales model.

As infūz built up its capabilities, marketing executives who had provided input invited us back to address their specific needs. Research meetings were gradually superseded by sales calls, and agency of record assignments began closing.