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Example Reflection – Visualization

Challenge

A review of Customer Satisfaction newsletter revealed plummeting customer satisfaction ratings, citing  “billing issues” as one of the priorities for improvement.  We were running “blind” on factors  contributing to the poor billing experience and no visibility existed into the business.  This prompted a  design thinking effort to understand the issue at hand.  Furthermore, the project must deliver a short  term and a long-term solution.  The goal is to deliver the short-term solution no later than 30 business  days and the long-term solution within six months.  To that end, I organized a full day workshop to scope  the initiative and to come up with possible design thinking approaches to solve the issue at hand.

Selection

As a Business Architect and a Design Manager, I have come to a realization that there is no one “silver  bullet” or a one-size fits all tool to tackle design challenges.  Since design thinking problems does not  involve a linear, straightforward approach, I typically use a combination of tools to address real world  problems.

I first leveraged the “Ethnography” tool1 to get a pulse of customer issues in a quick and economical  way.  I created customer surveys to understand the voice of the customers.  The Verbatim listing from  the customer satisfaction study helped me obtain a good pulse of the customer issues and their  unarticulated needs. As the project progressed, I employed other design thinking tools including  Visualization, Brainstorming, Story Telling and Learning Launch tools.

Application and Insight

Recognizing that design thinking is not only about processes and questions but also about real people, I  paid close attention particularly to the human dimensions aspect.  To maximize success, I utilized a  learning mindset, leveraged broad repertoire by thinking outside the box and focused my energy  surrounding the customer empathy.  The nuggets gained through the analysis of customer satisfaction  study was a game changer.  From there, I started to understand the customer journey by focusing on  customer issues and their requirements front and center.  Interesting insights then began to emerge.

I then used the visualization tool to present the data in a tangible and concrete format.  This enabled the  project team to comprehend and prioritize the problems at hand.  Using the visualization tool, I ranked  the top three (3) issues based on those attributes that had the biggest impact on customer satisfaction,  namely, Accuracy of Bills, On Time invoicing, and Average Cycles of late invoices not processed on time.

From there, we used the brainstorming tool, a structured technique aimed at idea generation.  We came  up with trigger questions and multiple rounds of silent idea writing to identify potential root causes of  the problem.  This collaborative approach helped us to enhance the quality of the idea generation  significantly.  I then mapped the current state “as-is” process and the future state “to-be” process with  clear hand-offs from one stakeholder to the next.  I built the Value Stream activities into the process  map and outlined wastes in the process.  This action provided us with the required focus for automating  manual process steps as well as laid the foundation for the business case.

1Design Thinking for Innovation Module 3 – The MeYouHealth Story

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To address the issues, I spawned a cross-functional project team comprising of service delivery,  provisioning, billing, software development, sales, and system personnel.  Each member of the cross- functional team focused on the voice of the customers and supported each other in an open  environment.  We knew that there was no blame, just a problem that if resolved would benefit the  company and enhance the customer experience.

I facilitated weekly milestone reviews with the project team.  Each member of the team took  accountability for their actions knowing they could make a substantial contribution to the bottom line and  customer satisfaction.  Additionally, they engaged the resources outside their own areas of expertise to  resolve the overall issue.

I collected benchmark of billing data to determine the intervals between the average number of days  between customer acceptance and first bill.  I then set milestones for improvement based on that  benchmark.  The project was particularly challenging because the order entry and tracking system did not  feed directly into the billing system.  However, I established action plans with clear timelines, roles and  responsibilities.

As a short-term measure, the project team generated weekly reports showing orders reaching customer  acceptance and notice of disconnects for billing team visibility to enable them to generate timely invoices  and disconnect actions.  As a long-term measure, I negotiated approval of a business case for automating  the billing process.  Once I gained approval, I worked with the development team on automation,  eliminating the necessity for manual searches for first bill date; or relying upon account managers, sales  staff, or customers to tell billing staff when billing needed to take place.  As the project progressed, it  provided opportunities to educate sales staff on setting appropriate client expectations for billing.

The automated process (long-term measure) significantly improved billing efficiencies leading to a 58  percent improvement in the number of orders billed within 30 days. This was really the main issue from  the initial customer satisfaction (verbatim) study.  Additionally, the company experienced a substantial  reduction in customer dissatisfaction with billing timeliness, as evidenced through a later customer survey  that demonstrated only six percent dissatisfied compared with the benchmark of 18 percent.

The use of design thinking as a problem solving approach had a positive impact on the company’s strategy.   They include, elevated customer experience by improving “book-to-bill time” with the timeliness of bills,  re-established trust thru improved billing efficiencies and improved customer satisfaction, improved  “order to cash” cycle times leading to smooth sales cycles for new services going forward and a “simple  and complete” billing experience by improving procedures, process, customer satisfaction, and  ultimately the bottom line.

Approach

As an alternate approach, our team would leverage the “Learning Launch” design tool to take advantage  of the inherent strategic opportunity having people, process and technology impacts.  This would help the  team achieve significant pay off by staying in the question and avoid knee jerk reactions.  We would then  search for higher ground by employing Optimization technique, i.e. finding the solution that best exceeds  our customer experience and design needs.  Not to mention, we will take the concept of “Curation” to  our hearts to cut through the complexity and find the real nuggets of wisdom.  Overall, future launch

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designs would help us understand the business nuances and intricacies and help our team demonstrate  to management the criticality of addressing human centered needs and the sensitivity surrounding it.

