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Rule 2: Don’t Make Your Customers Wait

14 June, 2015 by James Lawther 10 Comments

Head in the Sand

Why leave them waiting? If your customers are phoning you, texting you, mailing you and some have even gone to the lengths of visiting you and are standing there looking at you, then it is a fair bet that they want something. Rule 1 is to prioritise the work, but prioritising it isn’t enough, you can […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: abandon rate, cost of poor quality, customer behaviour, customer focus, gemba, queue, surge capacity

4 Ways to Change Behaviour

26 December, 2013 by James Lawther 11 Comments

There are 4 ways to change people’s behaviour: The first is the stick: Beat people until they do what you want. The stick works, but people hate being controlled, they will rebel — sooner or later.  Repression is not a great strategy. The second is the carrot: Provide an incentive.  Incentives work beautifully, until you remove […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement, Tools & Techniques Tagged With: conformity, customer behaviour, group think, human nature, incentives, motivation, political will, reinforcing behaviour, video

How to Walk in Your Customer’s Shoes

30 July, 2013 by James Lawther 6 Comments

Hire your Staff

We have all been told to “walk in our customer’s shoes”. When we walk in our customer’s shoes we can understand what our customers want: What their problems are What pressures they feel What is going on in their minds And if we can really understand our customers we can: Communicate better with them Give […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement Tagged With: colleagues, customer behaviour, no substitute for experience, recruitment

What do Your Customers Think?

23 March, 2013 by James Lawther 6 Comments

Here is a lovely little video.  You should watch it.  All 4 minutes and 18 seconds.   He gets to the point doesn’t he? And what is his point? I doesn’t matter how clever you are: If your customer doesn’t understand you, then you are wasting your time. A little usability testing goes an awfully […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: customer behaviour, insight, usability testing, video

Hot Chocolate Tastes Better in an Orange Mug

22 January, 2013 by James Lawther 9 Comments

Starbucks Hot Chocolate

That is not a random provocative statement (though I am guilty of those on occasion) it is a scientifically proven fact.  Charles Spence, of the University of Oxford and Betina Piqueras-Fiszman from the Polytechnic University of Valencia have statistically validated it. They served a group of people the same hot chocolate in white mugs, cream […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: continuous improvement, customer behaviour, knowledge management, wasted intellect

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