Category Archives: Customer focus

Focus on Customers and Employees

Posted on July 5, 2007 by John Hunter

As I have stated I believe it is the purpose of organization to serve many stakeholders (customer, employees, stockholders, community…). Thankfully some companies agree: Compensation at Whole Foods – Starbucks: Respect for Workers – Google: Ten Golden Rules – Amazon … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged Customer focus, leadership, management, managing people, organization as a system, respect for people | 4 Comments

Standard Prepaid Cell Phone Policy

Posted on June 21, 2007 by John Hunter

I ran across a specific example of standard policy that I found amusing (related to the post earlier today on Why Isn’t Work Standard). Like the authors, I can’t really see a reason for why you would want a policy … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Process improvement, Respect | 1 Comment

Innovation Thinking with Christensen

Posted on June 16, 2007 by John Hunter

In my opinion Clayton Christensen offers truly insightful ideas on innovation and management. He presents the rare management advice that is not only good but also new – an incredibly rare combination. The current issue of Business Week includes an … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, Innovation, Management, Management Articles | Tagged Creativity, Customer focus, customer service, Deming, Innovation | 3 Comments

Craigslist’s Ongoing Success Story

Posted on May 16, 2007 by John Hunter

Craigslist is a great web site focused largely on local connections and local ads (jobs, housing, classifieds…). It is in top 10 sites for the amount of traffic and a total staff of 24 people. eBay bought 25% of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Customer focus, Innovation, IT, Management | Tagged Customer focus | Comments Off

Google Customer Service

Posted on May 14, 2007 by John Hunter

Google and Ice: A service story: “Ice.com has been very vocal with its criticism. It’s a classic case of a dissatisfied customer. So from a PR dimension this was a problem for Google.” … “We got a call from Google … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Google, Management | 1 Comment

Experiment and Learn

Posted on March 18, 2007 by John Hunter

Experimenting with milkshakes? I have been on a mission to convince firms to do simple experiments that will give them feedback regarding the decisions that they make. Just as with people (as Anders Ericsson studies), firms cannot learn with feedback. … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, Design of Experiments, Management, Quality tools | Tagged experiments, iteration, management | Comments Off

Dell Innovation

Posted on February 25, 2007 by John Hunter

Dell has been taking some interesting actions recently. Several months ago they started blogging and interacting with bloggers. Those steps have been interesting since few other companies of their size have taken such action (nothing amazing, but seem much beyond … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Customer focus, IT, Management | Tagged blogs, communication, Customer focus, Innovation | 5 Comments

Seven Steps to Remarkable Customer Service

Posted on February 20, 2007 by John Hunter

Once again Joel Spolsky spins a great post with, Seven steps to remarkable customer service. Read it. It’s crucial that tech support have access to the development team. This means that you can’t outsource tech support: they have to be … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, IT, Management, Process improvement, Systems thinking | Tagged customer service, Deming, Software Development | 2 Comments

What Job Does Your Product Do?

Posted on February 19, 2007 by John Hunter

Finding the Right Job for Your Product* by Clayton M. Christensen, Scott D. Anthony, Gerald Berstell and Denise Nitterhouse (available online for a limited time only). The article has a very simple point. Customers buy your product or service to … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Management Articles, Process improvement | Tagged Customer focus | 12 Comments

Transforming With Lean

Posted on January 31, 2007 by John Hunter

Dave Gleditsch, Chief Technology Officer, Pelion Systems, makes many excellent points in: Transforming Your Business To Lean: Lessons Learned [the broken link was removed]: First and foremost, we should always keep the customer at the forefront of the planning and … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, quote | Tagged Lean thinking, transformation | 1 Comment