Why you NEED an Outsider’s Perspective
Have you ever heard the phrase “this is how we do it here?” Just because something has been done a certain way for a long time, does not mean it is still the most efficient. It’s hard to see your inefficiencies from your client’s perspective when you’ve created the experience.
Why is it important to take an outsider’s perspective when reviewing your business processes and the experiences of your clients?
Have a look at your to-do list.
How long is it?
Where in your priority list do you have reviewing and improving your processes? Let me guess… it’s probably a high priority but somehow other things keep getting in the way. Is that accurate to say?
Organisations often find reviews of their processes and client experiences as time consuming and as a distraction from the BAU and this process is then placed on the backburner, for another day. This then leads to inefficiencies, customer dissatisfaction, and in extreme cases sees good staff jump ship.
Improvement opportunities are present in every organisation. By reviewing the processes in your organisation, the number of steps in processes can be lessened, pain points removed, bottlenecks avoided, and technologies can be adapted to better serve the company.
Have you ever heard the phrase “this is how we do it here?” We’ve heard it way too many times, and guess what? Just because something has been done a certain way for a long time, does not mean it is still the most efficient. As a manager or when you’ve been doing something for a while, it’s hard to see your inefficiencies and especially hard to see things objectively from your client’s perspective when you’ve created the experience.
And here’s another question, if I may. How do you make decisions about what you need to improve? Decisions about what to improve first, and how to go about it? How many people give their own opinions (quite often because there’s something that impacts their business directly, so they say ‘please start here’) Using outsider perspectives when reviewing business processes and the experiences of your clients can help you identify new improvement opportunities and prepare your organisation for the future and at the same time remove our well known HIPO (highest paid person opinion) to make decisions that are unbiased, best suited for the organisation and mainly user centred. For example: Bringing in the voice of team members can help you identify the issues happening upstream or downstream in the process chain that may not have been identified otherwise or engaging clients on their experiences and what they want to see from your product, service, or service delivery.
So where should we start, you ask?
Start by helping others acknowledge that they may not have all the answers and the time required to improve services and systems, and explain the multiplier effect of having extra hands and brains supporting this while having the team delivering BAU.
Select a team that aligns with your values, the skillset that you need and, if you ask me, a key point is to ensure that whoever you engage is committed to helping to solve actual problems, and putting solutions that fit YOUR (and not others) organisation in place.
Reflect about what success looks like, what will make your life or your teams’ life easier and at the same time have impact on your customers? You may want to work with a group of your organisational leaders to begin making a list of the primary service or services your organisation delivers.
It’s INCREDIBLY important that the external team collaborates with your internal team to discuss your processes from start to finish gives everyone the opportunity to understand how their activities affect the process in a holistic way and identify where things could be improved. And as we always say at Three6 (and, we’ll probably keep repeating) ensure that you also engage with your customer base or prospects, because in they will provide invaluable perspectives on how processes can be optimised to deliver the desired results.
Don’t get us wrong, at Three6 we recognise that being objective and making the time needed is hard to do when you have day to day work to conduct and teams to manage. Assisting you in this process is a Three6 superpower. We can engage with your team members at all levels of the organisation and design services and processes in line with the goals of the organisation and the expectations of your customers, delivering exceptional customer experiences.
If you’d like the experience and expertise of a team that understands process and service design for your team and customers, get in touch with Three6 here or email us at hello@three6.com.au and let’s have a conversation about how we can assist your company get it right the first time!