Business Optimization Expert
There was a wise old lady who went to the bank on a weekly basis to deposit huge sums of money.
She already had USD 10M in her bank account, and it just kept on growing.
Because of her regular visits, she became a familiar face to the bank manager.
One day, a regulation got implemented requiring the wise old lady to explain the source of her income.
Continue reading “The Top Skill you Must Have in order to be Successful is?”
Have you ever had employees or colleagues who think they deserve more than the business owner or investor, just because they feel they’re doing all the work?
Meanwhile, “Why don’t they care about the business the same way as I do?” is a common complaint you’ll hear from business owners.
That’s why the most valuable employees are those who treat the business as if it is theirs.
They are the ones who will go far. The question is, do you want to be one of them?
I accompanied my wife to the doctor the other day for a routine check up.
The problem was that the hospital parking lot was completely full. Since it was a scheduled appointment, I had to drop her off while I waited for a basement parking slot.
When I was finally able to park at basement 5, I locked the car then went to take the elevator. I was greeted by a uniformed attendant in charge of manning the elevator, who asked me which floor I’m going to.
“Ground floor please” I asked, and the attendant acknowledged.
As we went up, we were later joined by 3 more people as the elevator stopped at basement 4.
Suddenly, the unthinkable happened – IT STOPPED to a COMPLETE HALT between basement 2 and 3.
Have you ever been the recipient of an escalation, where the customer is completely flustered, angry, and irate?
What was it like dealing with situations like that? Stressful isn’t it?
What about your colleagues, how do they deal with similar situations? I’m sure you’ve heard them go through the endless apologies to try and appease the customer.
But the thing is, customers are not after your apology. That wouldn’t do anything for them, and it will not get them closer to achieving what they want.
Continue reading “How to deal with Irate Customer Escalations”
This is one of my favorite techniques that always yields great results when it comes to moving the needle on CSAT.
I call this The Recap and Closing Question technique. Let’s talk about how it works.
Imagine you have a customer – Vincent, who was calling to about a negative experience during his previous call.
He might go and say:
- “First I want you to investigate why the person I am complaining about gave me a false promise. I want an email update to be sent to me regarding that.
- Second, I want you to tell me what the situation really is, why things are not progressing based on the agreed timeline.
- Lastly, I don’t want to go out of my way to proactively reach out to you again to follow-up. I want you to contact me at this time of the day, any day this week, to give me an update.”
Take note of what your customer said, and work on addressing those. Most importantly, do the Recap and Closing Question technique to wrap up everything that was discussed, and ensure the best chances of getting a high CSAT score.
For instance, you can recap by saying:
Continue reading “How to improve CSAT with The Recap and Closing Question technique”
This is a story of Mark (not his real name).
Mark is an Operations Supervisor who is managing a team of 12 people processing billing-related work items.
There were 2 working shifts – morning and evening, each with 6 team members respectively.
Their productivity metric was based on average number of work items completed per day. The higher the number of work items each person completes per day, they are perceived to be better performers in terms of productivity.
The problem that Mark faced was that there was a huge disparity in the productivity scores between each shift. The morning shifters are perceived to be able to work faster compared to the evening shifters.
Continue reading “How to STOP People from Cherry-Picking the Easy Work Items”
I got an interesting question yesterday, and by answering it, I believe it would provide value not just to the person who asked, but to everyone else going through the same predicament. So I’m sharing it here, and it goes like this:
“I have 16 FTE process and team divided into three complexities working on claims.
I am into insurance process and would like to do a Six Sigma Green Belt project on learning curve for the process training.
Currently the training period is for 36 weeks. So if I want to reduce the training period to less than what currently it takes, what all things have to be considered?
How to exactly go about this? Please suggest.”
On a high level, my recommendation is as follows:
Continue reading “Six Sigma Case Study: How to reduce the Training Period of New Hires”
Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the time available for it’s completion.
What this means is that normally, if you were to be given 1 hour to finish 3 tasks, you will probably consume the full hour just to complete those 3 tasks at hand.
Had you been given 45 minutes to finish the exact same 3 tasks, within reason, you would most likely be able to complete it as well, though probably in a more rushed manner.
Continue reading “True or False: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion”
Lean Six Sigma is sort of a misnomer. It’s a coined term, but it’s actually two entirely different things that compliment each other- Lean and Six Sigma. Allow me to explain in the most simple way I can.
Have you ever experienced being known as the only person who can get things done the right way in your job or business? And that everyone looked at you as the sole “expert” in that particular task?
I have. And back then, I thought that because I was the only one who can do it best, that I was the one who would get promoted first. Boy, was I wrong.
Continue reading “My greatest failure at being the Subject Matter Expert”