Posts Tagged ‘perceptions’

Blog #8: Best Practices for a Perception Improvement Program

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

What are the key elements in a successful perception improvement program?

A regular (i.e., annual) survey is the most efficient vehicle for measuring and improving perception. Nearly all surveying performed today, however, fails to achieve the stated objectives; and most surveys are not repeated in their most-current form. Critical points in the process include:

  • Defining the survey objectives should be done before the questionnaires are designed. Which services will be evaluated? Which comparison groups will provide the most meaningful insight into reasons behind dissatisfaction? What is the time line? How much improvement is desired?
  • Choosing the appropriate stakeholder population is important for maximizing the response rates and the relevance of the collected data.
  • Preparing and motivating the respondents boosts their buy-in and their faith in the results, which is essential for improving perception in subsequent years.
  • Managing the process requires setting and communicating expectations, providing timely feedback on the results and delivering on promises made.

The perception improvement program should be part of an integrated continuous improvement process with a strategic plan. The emphasis should be on cost-avoidance, efficient resource management and a lowest-risk strategy. The plan should be compatible with enterprise culture. Survey feedback needs to be far-reaching and candid. It should not come as a surprise that all key stakeholders need to be informed of the results. Critical to the success of this step is communication at the local level, with regional and business management addressing the key issues and their applicability — and contribution — to the overall satisfaction level.

Promoting the Program

In selling the benefits of an improvement program to the stakeholders, management needs to emphasize operational improvements (e.g., reducing frustration and delays). Business-unit management needs to be assured of the contribution to their political and performance goals. Do not discount the impact of business-unit power loss. The “losers” will often be the most needed advocates.

Conclusion

Do not rush the process — collaborate with all key stakeholders before rolling out any major changes. Once the changes are in place, schedule a follow-up meeting to build on the benefits and solicit support for beginning the survey cycle again.

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Best Practice-Integrating Customer Measurements into Business Processes

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Key Issue: How can a business be more effective?

Several recent surveys have highlighted two strong predictors of a business’ effectiveness. The first is having a continuous, interactive planning process between key business customers, business stakeholders and the business community. One of the most effective ways of doing this is through data and surveys.

Most measurement initiatives are either done as a single event or as an ongoing monitor of a single business process (e.g., a transaction-based survey or an annual employee satisfaction survey) and they are not incorporated into an enterprise wide, bottom-line impact quality program. Also, most initiatives are implemented once a problem has occurred (e.g., a decrease in customer retention rates) and not as an ongoing quality program to improve customer satisfaction, increase retention and bottom-line profits. The fatal flaws of these types of programs are that they are one-offs, only focused on a specific process and the feedback is never sent back to the respondents. In the long term, these initiatives will ultimately cause an increase in dissatisfaction, which is counterproductive to the organization.

The second predictor of a business’ effectiveness is for the key stakeholders and the business to make extensive use of external resources (e.g., best practice groups, consultants, research and benchmarking organizations) at all levels of business process maturity, including requirements, design and implementation phases. At each step in the sequence, the appropriate external resources should be leveraged to improve the effectiveness of the process and organization.

The high correlation found between the use of external resources and effectiveness is a function of several factors, including:

  • External resources enable the enterprise to learn more quickly and leverage the experience of others, reducing the number of potential mistakes.
  • The use of outside references and materials encourages the enterprise to break stagnant or harmful patterns of behavior and “think outside the box.”
  • External sources “triangulate” decision making between organizational structures, allowing leadership to consider the problem collaboratively with its constituents, rather than adopting antagonistic positions that reflect entrenched organizational biases.

Conclusion

Effectiveness measurement efforts need to evolve beyond metrics and demographics to the evaluation of perception. Why? Businesses can boast superior efficiency, meet posted service-level agreement (SLA) objectives and exceed all advertised functional requirements yet still suffer from the customer and stakeholder perceptions of missed alignment and lack of effectiveness. It is not enough to solicit the list of issues. You need the ultimate outcome to include an ordering of customer perceptions so you can successfully improve their experience and perception of your business.

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