As someone always looking for more efficient ways to do things – everything from running meetings to shopping for groceries – I love the Lean process improvement methodology. It allows me to scrutinize the way I accomplish a task, and then look for waste that I can reduce or eliminate. Lean is an iterative approach, using an ideal state as the goal for continuous improvement. But if your Lean efforts don’t include your customer, you may be improving the wrong things.
Much of Lean is done for the sake of efficiency – doing things faster, using less resources and producing less waste. I believe effectiveness is just as important as efficiency in operations; marrying the two is the sweet spot for companies who want to deliver an innovative service experience to their customers.
Effectiveness is just as important as efficiency in operations
Improving the Department of Motor Vehicles
Service at the department of motor vehicles is the classic Lean case study. Wait times for customers were long and internal processes imbued with “hurry up and wait” delays as paperwork sat on the desks of people who were unwitting bottlenecks. One Lean process improvement approach would be to streamline the process, removing things such as duplicated data entry (by the customer and DMV employees), delivering a promise to customers of “drivers licenses in less than an hour.”
What if we looked deeper into what DMV customers were trying to accomplish as they interacted with the department? Things like safe, accident free driving, and avoidance of tickets, leading to lowered insurance premiums. What would an experience at the DMV look like if that were the customer value proposition? A visit to the DMV becomes an opportunity to become a safer driver.
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Tips for Using Lean
How would an operations team improve the effectiveness of their organization and increase the value of their service to their customer? Their Lean process improvement approach could look something like this:
- Diverge – Interview customers and observe their interactions with the service. What tasks are they trying to achieve? What makes them successful? What outcomes are they trying to avoid?
- Converge – Hone in on a customer value proposition that increases their success (e.g. driving safely) and/or reducing negative outcomes (e.g. tickets).
- Explore – Build an ideal state map that includes delivery of that value proposition at every step.
- Refine – Create a future state map that includes the added customer value (effectiveness) and reduced operational waste (efficiency).
- Iterate – Continuously implement and improve the process, working towards the future state, testing at each step to ensure the customer experience is improving.
What do you think? Tell us a story about how your Lean process improvement efforts have increased the value of your service to your customer.