5 Ways to Initiate an Organizational Culture of BPM

Why Implement an Organizational Culture of BPM?

I’m holding a focus group with some call center associates from the general customer service queue of a major financial services institution.

I’m thinking that I’m going to have to sell them on why we’re here, work hard to get their support, and tenuously pull information from them. After all, they probably don’t want to be here…this is a part-time job for some, a stepping-stone job for others, and a placeholder job for the rest…and I need their honest, and probably negative, feedback to do my job.

My job is essentially to improve their jobs. I could not have been further from the truth.

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How Social Media and BPM Enable Customer Centricity

Social Media is both a threat and an opportunity.

Organizations are traditionally used to being in control of customer interactions and have long built IT systems that push messages to the customer. It is clear, however, that social media and the consumerization of technology has already had an impact on customer’s daily lives and is here to stay.

Through social listening and an effective Business Process Management system, organization’s ability to listen to the conversation and respond through changing business processes will become a major differentiator.

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Loading Planes Faster.

Getting people on and off planes is a fascinating topic. Most people have a very visceral response to it if only because it is a business process that we are routinely exposed that often does not run well. Why it doesn’t run well can be blamed on the airline (since there is not the same degree of process standardization in boarding that one sees at, say, a supermarket checkout) or our fellow travelers (since those idiots so often don’t follow instructions). There have been some recent innovations such as boarding passengers in a random fashion or allowing those who do not need an overhead bin to board first. NowWired reports that other process changes are coming (Airlines Still Trying to Make Passenger Boarding Less Annoying, Aug 28).

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It’s the Customer, Stupid

EPM Channel recently interviewed Janne Ohtonen about focusing on the customer when doing process improvement. Janne Ohtonen is a Business Process and Customer Experience Management trainer, consultant, speaker, expert & coach with over ten years of international experience.

Find out his thoughts on customer experience, tolerating failure (!), the importance of goals and metrics.

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Should Restaurants Eliminate Tips?

How do you feel about tipping? Are you happy to reward a well-done job or do you have more of a Mr. Pink attitude toward gratuities?

A pair of recent Slate articles got me thinking about tipping. The first is pretty straightforward and makes the case that tipping at restaurants should just be banned (Tipping Is an Abomination, Jul 9). The argument is that the practice is bad for customers since it leads to uneven treatment and bad for workers since it allows employers to pay absurdly low wages. But what happens when a restaurant simply eliminates tipping? That is the topic of the second article written by a former restauranteur who did just that (What Happens When You Abolish Tipping, Aug 14). In lieu of tipping, the restaurant added an 18% service charge to the check. Thus it pricing was more like an auto service station that breaks out its labor charges from the cost of parts.

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Balancing Bikes

Bike sharing is spreading across the nation. One of the highest profile programs has been in New York City, and while there has been griping about various aspects of the Citi Bike program, it has by some measures been successful. According to the NY Times, the system has attracted over 70,000 annual members and has handled over more than 42,000 trips on a peak day (The Balancing Act That Bike-Share Riders Just Watch, Aug 14).

One of the challenges that has come up with the system is how to balance the supply and demand of bikes between stations.

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