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In some organizations, the Customer Service function is largely viewed as a cost center, draining resources of the firm. I maintain that this viewpoint is one that less mature companies support. In what follows, I’ll take a hypothetical iPhone defect case and show how customer service in this example plays a pivotal role in the overall iPhone supply chain — a key player in the overall product value chain.
PowerPoint is a world of incomplete sentences, fragmented thoughts, unemotional, dispassionate, and semantically-empty byte-size blob of consultant-speak.
Okay — maybe that tone is too strong but, generally, PowerPoint is not the most effective medium of communication. I think most people would agree with that. There are ways to communicate and effective ways of creating an atmosphere of discussion and debate with PowerPoint, but most people don’t use PowerPoint for that purpose. It’s unfortunate.
I’ve written about this before — how Bezos doesn’t allow PowerPoint in meetings with him and considers gratuitous clipart to be anathema, and how Edward Tufte argues strongly and effectively against PowerPoint.
A few months ago we adopted our baby girl, Mylie. During that hospital experience, I had an encounter with a faucet fraught with featuritis and one that wasn’t humane and, during that same time, I noticed a piece of visual management in the hospital room that wasn’t effective in its intention to provide or share information. This involved a sign in one of the cabinets, where the sign indicated in text the contents of the cabinet. Below is a picture of what I saw:
It’s critically important in any transaction to be able to answer the question “where’s my stuff” or “where are we in the process?” This requirement is often referred to as Traceability and Visibility; sometimes, people refer to this overall process as Click-to-Ship.
Almost all transactions have Traceability and Visibility as a requirement. From the customer’s perspective, they ought and need to know the status of the transaction. The company, then, needs to provide feedback and status to the customer whenever she needs it. Take, for example, the following transaction types:
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