Category Archives: Customer focus

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 the common corporate, totally out of touch attempts to adopt new technology – they seemed to be committed to actually try to learn about interactive web thinking). They recently created IdeaStorm to Turn Up the Volume of Customer Voice [the … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Customer focus, IT, Management | Tagged , , , | 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 right there at the same street address as the developers, with a way to get things fixed. This idea is powerful yet ignored by most companies. Management must look at the best way to improve the entire system not to … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, IT, Management, Process improvement, Systems thinking | Tagged , , | 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 fill some specific need or desire. Knowing what need the customer is filling can help you improve your offering. Knowing what job the customer is using your product for lets you focus on improving your product for that market. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Management Articles, Process improvement | Tagged | 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 implementation process. A key to success is in being able to find the customer in every single metric you choose to measure your Lean transformation progress by. Often measures become the focus and the reason for improvement is obscured. Improvement … Continue reading →

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

Innovation Examples

Posted on January 11, 2007 by John Hunter

Two examples from 37signals: first, Pioneer Theater. Good idea. I am stretching to call it innovation, today, maybe 5 years ago it was. Today I think any reasonably sized theater should have something like this in place. The interface is a bit confused. At first the views didn’t seem to correspond to what I would expect when I click on various seats [the broken link was removed]. Then I read a little closer and the view you see is shown … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Innovation, IT, Management | Tagged | 2 Comments

The Psychology of Too Much Choice

Posted on January 7, 2007 by John Hunter

An understanding of psychology is one of the four components of Dr. Deming’s management system. This understanding lies behind practices such as: driving out fear, respect for people and eliminating slogans. In an organization all the components (practices, processes, investments, training, people, suppliers, customers…) interact with the others. Dr. Deming tried to develop a system that took that reality into account. This reminds me of Einstein’s thought that “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Often … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, Management, Psychology | Tagged | 2 Comments

Change Your Name

Posted on December 28, 2006 by John Hunter

Best Buy Asks Man To Change Name [the broken link was removed]: Turns out if your last name is less than three letters, the online sign-up isn’t an option for you. Companies often put up barriers for no reason, then leave customer service agents to try and explain. And then this happens: When he called Best Buy one customer service agent even suggested he change his name Now that is great 🙂 Charles Yu: “I said well, I think that … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, IT, Management, Software Development | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Customer Un-focus

Posted on December 28, 2006 by John Hunter

Counties caught in conundrum: getting Amish to take food stamps [the broken link was removed] by John Horton Accepting public assistance is verboten within the Amish culture. It simply is not done. But Taylor is under orders to at least try to get them enrolled. The Ohio Department of Job & Family Services has asked Geauga and Holmes counties, which feature the state’s largest Amish populations, to lift dismal food-stamp participation rates. Taylor and his Holmes counterpart, Dan Jackson, called … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Data, Management, Public Sector | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Poor Service – Industry Standard?

Posted on December 27, 2006 by John Hunter

More Trouble Canceling HP Orders by Bob Sutton: I wrote a post a couple months ago about how difficult it was to cancel an order I had JUST made for an HP computer, and how when I complained on the phone to the HP salesperson, his justification was that it was “industry standard,” which really pushed my buttons — as the logic is “I am going to treat my customers badly just because everyone does.” How true. One good example, … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management

Management Improvement Carnival #1

Posted on December 7, 2006 by John Hunter

There have been a number of great post recently about management improvement: Amazon’s Long Public Haul by Kevin Meyer – “Amazon has now been around a while and has a loyal following. Their culture is apparently deep, at least for the most part. But that does not guarantee long-term success.” Jeff Bezos Risky Bet Isn’t New by Peter Abilla – “Guess what everybody — Bezos’ Risky Bet isn’t new. Amazon has been doing that for years, but they’re just now … Continue reading →

Posted in Carnival, Customer focus, Innovation, Lean thinking, Management | 5 Comments

Ritz Carlton and Home Depot

Posted on December 6, 2006 by John Hunter

Don MacAskill writes of his great service from Ritz-Carlton and horrible service from Home Depot. Neither result is surprising, see related posts below… Ritz-Carlton’s motto is “We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.” And they actually turn those words into reality… Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

What Could we do Better?

Posted on November 29, 2006 by John Hunter

At the Hunter Conference, years ago, a speaker (I forget who) talked about how to get useful feedback. He discussed how asking “how is everything” normally will get the response: “fine” (which is often that is exactly what the staff wants so they can move on without wasting any time). However, if you really want to improve that doesn’t help. He explained how he worked with Disney to improve their restaurants. Using the “how is everything” question had not alerted … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Management, Popular, Quality tools | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments

European Blackout: Human Error-Not

Posted on November 18, 2006 by John Hunter

German utility E.On says major European blackout was caused by human error [the broken link was removed] Germany utility E.On AG said Wednesday that a European-wide blackout earlier this month that left millions without power was the result of human error and not any technical glitches. The Duesseldorf-based company said the power outage, which led to blackouts in parts of Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Spain on Nov. 4, was not caused by a lack of proper maintenance or … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Lean thinking, Management, Process improvement, Quality tools, Respect | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Sub-Optimize

Posted on November 15, 2006 by John Hunter

From the “you call this agile?” department by Joel Spolsky: Yes, context switching is painful. Yes, you need to take into account the costs of context switching when you interrupt someone’s work. But every decision has pros and cons and when I hear a manager who is just talking about the cons without considering the pros, that manager is not doing their job. This is a simple article about basically choosing to sub optimize a part to optimize the whole. … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, IT, Management, Software Development, Systems thinking | 2 Comments

Investing in Six Sigma

Posted on November 5, 2006 by John Hunter

Bank of America: Investing in Six Sigma [the broken link was removed] by Thomas Hoffman: To help the bank’s IT organization align more strategically with its businesses, Desoer has challenged her IT staff to learn more about the bank’s external customers and their needs. “The voice of the customer is what you start with when you embark on a Six Sigma piece of work,” she says. I think in reality there are several things needed at the starting block but … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, IT, Management, Six sigma, Software Development | Tagged ,

No Customer Focus

Posted on November 3, 2006 by John Hunter

John Battelle writes the excellent searchblog. A recent post, Rant: The Comcast HD DVR Is Simply, Terribly Awful, provides another example of a company lacking customer focus. See the comments for even more confirmation of the lack of customer focus. The interface is simply abominable. Unintuitive and careless, it copies the major features of Tivo’s approach but fails at every single detail – and in UI design, everything is in the details. No surprisingly, it utterly misses the core purpose … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Fun, IT, Management | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments