INSIDER

Customer-First Processes Permeate Six Sigma Blackbelt’s Service Operations

By George Miller

“Customer first” is a philosophy widely touted now. But there are differences in degree of customer-first philosophies. For some practitioners, it’s nearly an obsession.

Griffin

“Every process has to be customer focused,” said Michelle Griffin, vice president for customer experience at Océ North America, in an interview. “Direct employees in service organizations and sales people are the front line [for understanding customer needs for presenting the company to customers]. We don’t settle when we find processes that aren’t customer first. We find the root cause and make sure the problem is fixed.”

Griffin, a Six Sigma Master Black Belt, is leading the charge in Oce’s customer service and support groups to instill customer-first thinking and practices.

Six Sigma involves looking at business processes and making sure they are customer focused, rather than being tailored around internal administrative needs. “Processes must make it easy for the customer to do business with you,” said Griffin. “[Six Sigma] involves fact-based management rather than management by gut instinct.”

In fact, the customer-first philosophy is the first of Oce’s seven stated core values. The company’s commitment is reinforced with monthly newsletters, as part of performance appraisal process, and with recognition, including awards presented by the chairman R.L. van Iperen at company headquarters in Venlo, The Netherlands.

“Services determine whether customer is satisfied and stays with you a long time,” said Griffin. She is responsible for growing the service revenue business, so her actions are in contrast to those who would have an eye only on cutting costs.

Through Griffin’s efforts, Oce now boasts 75 certified field service managers, including eight certified black belts, spread throughout the service organization.

Her goal is to get everybody thinking as if they own the business processes, and to be responsible for eliminating anything that deviates from customer-first value.

“Six Sigma lets employees help improve the processes they work on,” she said. The idea is to measure all along the way, for continuous improvement. Still, she acknowledges that Six Sigma is not an end-all solution. “You have to have good management processes, driven from top.”

Unsurprisingly, Griffin relies heavily on customer surveys to keep processes in sync. Among these are customer satisfaction surveys. When Oce receives a negative survey from a customer, a member of the support team calls within 24 hours to follow up and take action to improve the customer’s opinion of the company. Customers are asked if they want to file a complaint.

She noted that Oce gets a high response rate to these surveys—42%—due in part to the fact that the surveys are personalized and tied to a technician, whose is usually known by the customer. The surveys are also a component of technicians’ performance appraisals.

Performance-measurement dashboards are in operation in service centers, for constant monitoring of equipment restoration time, response time, time between failures, etc.

Of course, not every organization can be expected to put the same level of effort into customer satisfaction. But Griffin and Oce are proof that “customer-first” can be more than just a marketing claim.

Griffin was a featured speaker at the Interlog Customer Service and Support Summit this week.

www.oce.com

George Miller
Site Editor
gmiller@questex.com