Sue and Simon discuss Chapter 7 - I've added new services, how can I make them more efficient? from their book "Every Second Counts: How to Achieve Business Excellence, Transform Operational Productivity, and Deliver Extraordinary Results." Don't forget to register for the Productivity Forum 2024
For those that have never seen it link to the Do It All advert below (enjoy) DO IT ALL VIDEO
Sue and Simon discuss Chapter 7 - I've added new services, how can I make them more efficient? from their book "Every Second Counts: How to Achieve Business Excellence, Transform Operational Productivity, and Deliver Extraordinary Results." Don't forget to register for the Productivity Forum 2024
For those that have never seen it link to the Do It All advert below (enjoy) DO IT ALL VIDEO
Welcome to the Rethink Productivity podcast. Sue joins me again. We're on chapter seven, almost near the end. Can't wait to see who the murderer is when we get there. Chapter seven, then. I've added new services. How can I make them more efficient, Susan?
Speaker 2:
So this is about the fact that a lot of businesses are adding new services. So I guess the classic would be a lot of whether it's shops or and or restaurants that are offering home delivery services. So it might be that they're having to deal with orders coming in from different places and they've got drivers picking them up. It might be that they're then running a delivery service as well. So that would be the classic. But there's a lot of businesses that are looking to get growth through adding on doing something different, so it could be something that's connected to what they do. It could be just where people to stay in longer.
Speaker 1:
So lots of people have added in cafes and that sort of thing into a, into a retail offer to increase dwell time and, hopefully, sales so this is about selling to your existing customers, leveraging that relationship you've already got, because that's easier than going out and trying to buy or find a load of new customers. And certainly in highly competitive markets supermarkets, discounters people are transient these days. You might be loyal for a main shop, but I'm sure then people pick off some of the other brands to have a walk in, have a look around, pick up a few bits that they might like.
Speaker 2:
So yeah, in a world of grain competition the logic is sell more to the same and it's another reason to lock your customer in, and from a marketing and a strategic business point of view it makes a lot of sense operationally.
Speaker 2:
It can create lots of challenges because it might affect your own core operation that was running really smoothly and suddenly there's something different. It might be that suddenly you're trying to do something that's not one of your core operations and you maybe don't even have the operational skill for it. So you know, if you're I don't know running a clothes shop and somebody says, great, we're going to have a cafe, have you got the in-house skills to do that, or do you need to partner elsewhere? And then the other challenge that comes along is if those businesses are successful, if that extra service is successful. Coping with a growing, fast growing business is an interesting challenge as well, because often the way you set things up to start with, when you're first testing it and learning, isn't where you want to be when you've got a fully mature business that's growing fast so there's kind of two points here, isn't there?
Speaker 1:
there's the. The next example I think they typically have costas in now. Yeah, um, so they've obviously done some work. That says, if we can get people to stay longer, is my assumption here. Uh, maybe they spend more. If there's a considered purchase on furniture, they can go and have a cup of coffee and come back. They've not left the store. Therefore we're more likely to keep the sale. But clearly at some point they've made a very strategic decision to say costa are experts in running coffee shops, making coffee, making coffee, serving coffee. We're not. Therefore, this is this is the best partnership win-win for, for both organizations.
Speaker 1:
If we flip that the other way and you talked on things like there's picking from store, which we'll circle back to we've got the whole delivery uber eats, just eat phenomenon that's. That's crept in everywhere and you know, even in the likes of retail shops, not just restaurants, you've got your lockers, your pick and drop, your every, all those bits that come together. And we'll talk about specialist kind of roles separately. That's typically all done by the operators themselves. So in Supermarket X, their people will pick the goods online ordering. In Restaurant Y, their people will make the food and push the buttons on the app for the delivery driver rider to come and collect. So that's quite disruptive, I assume in the early stages.
Speaker 2:
It can be, and particularly when you get a lot of volume. And one of the challenges we see is when people have got a lot of parcels, just where do you put them? You know just simple practicalities of. I've now got a whole room full. That's just round christmas.
Speaker 1:
Black friday yeah, the volume, and especially if you're catering, you know, for organizations that sell a packet of screws up to sheds or big suitcases, you know the breadth of storage is inconceivable, really.
Speaker 2:
Yeah and for a lot of places. If you're a little convenience store, it really makes a lot of sense to be offering that parcel pick up and drop off because it's something that's easy for your customers and obviously increases your footfall. Let's say, if you're successful and you've got a little corner shop and suddenly you've got, like you know, two roller cages of parcels to to store, it can become very inefficient fast so we're back to one of our core principles we've talked about before learning, learning fast.
Speaker 1:
So failing quickly, learning fast, lockdown, which seems an eternity ago now but really isn't. We saw that whole switch. We've talked about in other podcasts people doing stuff in five or six days that they had six, seven months earmarked. Certainly picking was one of those out for delivery. That's probably abnormal. So in a normal world, what's that thought process around how you kind of learn faster and improve the process?
Speaker 2:
It's having an appreciation that the way you start up small scale will quickly become not the best way to do it. And how do you keep almost ahead of that business growth to create capacity, to grow into without creating too much that? You've got lots of people standing about, but how do you keep ahead of it? Because otherwise your life's a constant pain, because you're always running too fast and never quite catching up, and actually the end result of that is you. You probably don't offer a great service to your customers either. So there's an operational challenge with it, because it's really hard working in a business if your processes are just not designed for the scale of your business. But actually there's probably a customer impact as well, because you're probably not doing a great job at it either but adversely.
Speaker 2:
You don't want to throw loads of resource at it because you'll create your own inefficiency yeah, you don't want to create a service where it means people are standing about for half the day with nothing to do so there's something about that continuously evaluating the process as volume and scale grows.
Speaker 1:
Does the process follow the same efficiency, or is there a curve where it actually becomes less efficient and you need to do more with people, technology, equipment, whatever it might be?
Speaker 2:
yeah, it's a constant changing. I think the thing that makes it most difficult to manage is if you are being successful and it's growing. It's always changing. So what I did six months ago isn't the optimum anymore. It now needs to be something different.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and the technology will change, won't it? And the customer behaviours will change and everything that goes with it. Costs will go up. So we'll just talk briefly before we talk about quick wins around specialist roles. So a business X has an idea that they're going to put a specialist role in that's going to be in aisles one, two, three, four, focusing on products. Xyz, we're going to drive sales by doing that. Yeah, that's historically been something that some of the larger change that we'll all have shopped at will have tried.
Speaker 2:
Some have stuck, some not, but inherently it's been really difficult for them to get the value for a lot of that investment or thought process yeah, and it's partly because what you're looking for to do those roles is somebody who wants to sell and engage with people and has taken on the training. So you probably need somebody that's really enthusiastic about the products that they're trying to sell, has deep knowledge, wants to talk to people and wants to share, share them, share that knowledge and it also means they're probably going to have periods of downtime when there's just nobody there not if I was the store manager well, that's the trouble, because if you were the store manager, you'd be saying can you just go and put that stock out?
Speaker 2:
and once your head's down, then you're not available for customers and you're not doing the selling. So what often happened with those roles? People say I don't want to see you standing about, so therefore they just become another part of the operation.
Speaker 1:
So all you've done is make your whole operation less efficient and you're still not selling anymore so we're going to go on a history lesson now and I can talk about this because they don't exist anymore. So in the, in the good old days when clearly I had hair, um, do it all. For those that remember how to do it all, do it. The famous advert still available on youtube tear to my eye. Um, we introduced customer service team and and it was.
Speaker 1:
It was well done and it was part of the time when we were owned by boots and we had our price and halfords and children's world and there was quite a good array of brands at the time and the journey was about being self-managed teams and coaching, and but one of the principles was around we're going to win through service in diy, which is an interesting concept still probably to this day and we had a customer service team. So there was customer service team leaders and customer service managers, I think, and I'll never forget they were and it was really clear mandate not to be involved in process. And as a young 16, 17-year-old running around putting stock out with lots of others, my memory of that period is just seeing five or six people every day just stood by the power tool bar doing nothing, and it used to drive me absolutely insane and at the time I didn't understand it.
Speaker 2:
And looking back I get it, but I don't ever remember him being busy and that's the thing with those roles they're really difficult to recruit into, partly because you often have a line manager that doesn't appreciate your skills and kind of what you should be doing.
Speaker 1:
I mean, these were all great people they were, don't get me wrong, I can remember all their names and they were a great part of the team, but from a pure, I've just worked an eight-hour shift and lamped a load of stock pallets out through to. I don't actually recall them speaking to anybody other than each other well, and that's they have to be doing the right behaviors.
Speaker 2:
we've seen it in things you see in you know kitchen showrooms or all sorts of places where actually what they're selling is quite high item value and you know a lost sale is worth a lot. You know it's kind of how do you get that balance between people that are real people, people and can sell, versus operational.
Speaker 1:
But I agree with the theory if you get it right and there's um, an upsell, an incremental sell and information passing to a customer, that gives you some advocacy, that gives you repeat business, I get it. I think it's really difficult to prove the benefit. It is really difficult. Anyway, I'll we'll revert back to the present. That was a blast in the past. So quick wins. Then what can you do on your own? So there's the age.
Speaker 2:
You'll kind of spend time watching your people carry out the process yes, because when a process is flowing well, it almost looks like it's choreographed, so people move smoothly around each other. If there's something not right and people are getting each other's ways, you'll see there's lots of stop, start and jerky movement. So you don't have to be a process expert to be able to say does that look like it's flowing smoothly or are people backtracking, stopping, getting in each other's ways? So just looking at that movement is a really good indicator of whether it's working well or not Unexpected visits.
Speaker 1:
So, again, I think a classic in our world is these are the process maps. This, again, I think a classic in our world is these are the process maps. This is what everybody does. Then we'll go and see it in real life and say, yeah, they kind of probably do 20% of that and there's a bunch of stuff you didn't know they were doing. And the reality of the world versus the map of the world are disconnected. So don't tell them you're coming. Go and see it when it's busy as well, because it's easy to see something when it's quiet. Work with your partner suppliers. If they've got technology, if they've got equipment, you know, lean on them, challenge them to develop further. What's their next iteration? What's their roadmap? What are they learning from competitors of yours that they work with or even in other industries that you can? You can bring through?
Speaker 2:
they don't have to share names, but there must be some gold in there yeah, they've always got lots of expertise that they can share with you, provided you've got that relationship right with them kpis.
Speaker 1:
So we're not suggesting have a massive long list of things to report on. But how do you know it's going well? Why are the good performers doing really well? Why the why aren't the the good performers doing so well and what could they learn or do differently?
Speaker 2:
and that's an important principle. So getting kpis right so we're not just talking. What's the actual end result?
Speaker 1:
so our sales up or what sales should be the output yeah.
Speaker 2:
So it's not your output measures, it's how do you know that your process is working well? So do you know how much rework you're doing? Do you know how many times people have to, you know, get delayed if they're picking up a parcel, or you know if I was those?
Speaker 1:
things. If I was working in an organization, at deliveroo, I'd be looking at declined orders because to me that's a clear indicator of the staffing is not right, so they're declining them because they're too busy, or the process or the training isn't right because that's stuck, isn't it?
Speaker 1:
yeah, they're all lost sales yeah um and and people will stop ordering, asking the team as ever. You know this is. This is kind of basic stuff, but they will tell you what's working, what's not. Some of them may have worked in other organizations that have done it differently. That you can, you can benefit from, and one of the big things is around this whole peak implementation and communication piece. Labour turnover is high. We know it's tricky to keep people. When you keep people, they don't necessarily stay, so training them is getting slicker. There's lots of cool apps out there and frontline comms tools that do a great job, but you've got a very limited span to get this stuff right now and that person will either do a great job and maybe leave, or do a great job and stay, or a poor job and leave, or a poor job and stay.
Speaker 2:
So that probably doesn't change, but the way you can get that message to people, there's certainly lots of stuff out there to help yeah, and I think with that implementation piece, the chances are when you're first starting, it is your process isn't as slick as it could be because it's not been road tested, it's not been, it's not been worked the same. So you are asking people to do things that you know there isn't a huge muscle memory within the organization of this is how you do a good job of it, so it does take probably a lot more effort than you think perfect.
Speaker 1:
So that's chapter seven. Three more to go, so chapter eight's next. How do I find my next set of productivity improvements? Thanks, sue, and we'll be back for the next chapter thank you bye.
