A good friend of mine wanted to find out how a customer application process worked in his department. He didn’t grab his notebook and interview his colleagues. He didn’t draw up elaborate as-is process flows in Visio. He didn’t even write one word of documentation. Instead, he did something much more effective – he went through the application process himself.
14 letters and 5 weeks later, my friend had conclusive evidence of how the process worked, along with a set of recommendations on how to improve it.
This approach is definitely not new and is used extensively in other forms. Mystery shoppers simulate real customers. And for something closer to home, ‘dog-fooding‘ is often discussed in the software development community.
Before all you process people throw your hands up in protest, I do admit there are some shortfalls to this method: it is best suited for customer-facing processes; it doesn’t cover all scenarios; it’s anecdotal rather than statistical – you won’t know if what you experience is the most common process. However you will certainly uncover gaps that need further investigation in the traditional way.
What you get is a real-life view of what your customers go through when dealing with your company. If you can record the process you’ll also get an artifact – physical letters, emails, recorded phone calls, screen captures – that you can transmit to your colleagues in a high-impact way. You’ll end up closer to the reality, than to the process that people thought existed. You’ll find out if your welcome letter arrives after the product, or your service takes months to get up and running. Can you handle the truth?
Tags: process