Engelska Artiklar

En liten film om motivation!

Motivation och dess drivkrafter har det forskats i väldigt mycket under 1900-talet och in på 2000-talet. Som ni kanske läste i nyhetsbrevet, är det vissa saker som fungerar och andra som får en direkt motsatt verkan. För en snabb genomgång rekommenderar vi att ni tar en titt på denna film. Den slår hål på väldigt [...]

Going beyond “The Machine …”: The story of Taiichi Ohno and the Toyota Production System

An economic legend in its own lifetime, Toyota represents the apogee of Japanese post-war economic success. Even in these turbulent economic times Toyota’s market capitalisation comfortably outstrips all of its ‘Big Three’ American rivals. On 2007 figures, Toyota had overtaken Ford and drawn level with General Motors in global sales, despite taking substantially fewer man-hours [...]

Systems thinking – management by doing the right thing

What we have witnessed in the last 20 years is a series of programmes of change failing to achieve their intended outcomes. Customer Care, ISO 9000, TQM, ABC, BPR. All the research and experience show that the latest panacea does no better than its predecessors. Over and over again improvement programmes are thwarted by [...]

Public sector targets: doing less of the wrong thing is not doing the right thing

This paper was sent to Ruth Kelly, Minister for Communities and Local Government, on January 2 2007 with the following accompanying note: Dear Mrs Kelly, Firstly I should commend your recent White Paper for providing a framework within which the systems approach might be more easily employed by local authorities. I say this because much [...]

From Sweat Shops to World Class – Transforming Call center operations

Why do organisations set up call Centres? To improve customer service and reduce costs. In practice, the introduction of Call Centres has often resulted in WORSE service and HIGHER costs.
How has this happened? The essential problem is that Call Centres have been set up using the principles of scientific management. These ideas are plausible but [...]

Design against demand

When you can predict why customers call a Call Centre from the customers’ point of view, and you know what matters to the customers (the ‘value’ work); and then, when you respond to the customer you do only the ‘value’ work; you find your service improves as your costs fall. Customers ‘pull’ value from the [...]

Better thinking about managing people

One of the key assumptions in call centre design and management is that people can be held accountable for their performance. Call centre workers are appraised on the amount of work they do – how many calls they take and how long they take on calls. In fact their performance is governed by many things [...]

Better thinking about demand

One of the fundamental mistakes in call centre design and management is to treat all demand as units of production. Call centre managers are preoccupied with ‘how many people do I need?’ and ‘how many calls do they have to take?’ Managers are regaled with data about demand. The modern ACD systems and associated software [...]

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