continued from page 20
When a mistake is made in
an account, the customer is
unhappy. If it happens again,
the customer starts to look for
a new provider. Are you keeping
track of your mistakes? If so,
do you learn from them? In the
Define phase, Voice of Customer is one of the most important
tools. Once you know what
your customer seeks, you can
measure to see how well you
are meeting their expectations.
is discussing continuous
improvement, which can hold
the root cause: People,
Process, Technology,
and/or Communication.
pain points that are
experienced by themselves
and the customer.
In the Analyze phase, the
front-line employee is a key
Frequently, companies blame
ingredient in the facilitation of
the people for the mistakes.
an Ishikawa diagram (Cause
“The people are just here for a
and Effect Analysis, Fishbone
paycheck.” “These young
Diagram, Root Cause Analysis).
people do not understand the
In many projects, the employee
importance of customer
participation in the Ishikawa
service.” Quotes such as
tool starts the change
these abound.
management process in their
The next phase is Measure.
minds. The employees have
When I ask the questions from In reality, it is a tiny percentage become part of building the
the previous paragraph of my
of problems that are actually
solution. If the employees feel
clients, they usually do not
caused by the employees. The
like a part of the solution,
have the numbers. Institutions employee just happens to be
instead of being told they are
know how many accounts were the face of the defect. While
part of the problem, those
opened last year, the profit and many front-line employees
employees will adopt and
loss, the number of employees, have a misguided belief that
promote the changes necessary
and a myriad of other numbers Lean Six Sigma will result in
for the process and culture
that run a business from an
an elimination of their job, my change needed for a
accounting and financial
personal experience of working lasting improvement.
perspective. However, the
in the world of financial
number of defects in the
services, has meant that the
Many managers are concerned
processes and how these are
employee is recognized for
about involving the employees
impacting operations will affect knowing how to solve the
in projects and how it will
the accounting and financial
problems because they are the reflect on their ability to lead.
numbers over time.
people that interact with the
I am writing this article to
customers and know of the
advocate that employee
Defects are a leading indicator
of future losses. The losses are
the lagging indicator. When I
start with a new client, they
usually tell me all about the
problems that they are
experiencing. In the measure
phase, the company works to
accept, reject, or update the
hypothesis that was built in
define. It is only after we start
measuring and analyzing the
issues that the root cause of
the problem becomes apparent.
After we baseline the measure,
we start the Analyze phase.
There are three or four things,
dependent on which expert
Continued on page 22
The Credit Professional
21
October 2015