Everything, everywhere, all at once

Hey there,

One of the biggest sources of interruptions, chaser phone calls and customer frustration is 'corporate amnesia'.

And you don't have to be corporate to suffer from it.

How many times a day does a team member ask "Where is...?".

How many times a day does a client ring up and ask "Where's my....?".

How many times a day do you ask someone in your team "What's happening with...?"

These are symptoms of the onset of corporate amnesia. And I want you to avoid developing it further.

So, today, I'm going to talk about how to ensure anyone can find any information they need, when they need it. We'll look at:

• What kind of information you need to be sharing
• Why you should start low-tech and physical before you rush out and buy software
• Some simple rules you can use to ensure you build a shared space for information that actually works

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What kind of information you need to be sharing

Obviously, you want everyone to be able to access the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) you came up with after my first newsletter.

You also want everyone to be able to access key contacts, such as your IT provider, your internet provider, your landlord if you have one, your regulator if you have one, your accountant, your lawyer, your HR provider, even your local police station, urgent care centre or A&E. The specifics of this list are up to you. The point is to have a relatively short list of infrequently used, but important contacts somewhere where everyone can find it quickly and easily.

Perhaps most importantly, you want everyone to be able to find client information. Not just their contact details and what they've bought from you, but where they are in your process. So that when they get in touch to check progress, or ask a question, anyone can answer them straight away.

As we saw in another previous newsletter, as many as 30% of calls to service organizations are follow-ups related to unresolved issues from previous interactions, so by enabing any team member to answer questions from any client about where they are in the process, is going to reduce interruptions AND make your clients really happy.

Let me give you an example.

My other half used to working in the import/export business, getting people's stuff to and from exhibitions all around the world. Now the thing about exhibitions is that there are deadlines that cannot be extended. If your stuff doesn't arrive in time, all the time, effort and money you've put into it is completely wasted. You've missed your slot.

As you can imagine, the run-up to an exhibition was hectic, negotiating prices, booking trailers, getting stuff through Customs. And customers, quite naturally, ringing up every 5 minutes to check that everything was on track. As a small team, dealing with multiple concurrent exhibitions, the team couldn't afford to keep customers waiting for an answer.

So they set up a very simple system.

Every team member had their own set of customers for each exhibition they dealt with.

They started a new folder for every new customer. They labelled it with the exhibition name, the date of the exhibition and the customer name.

The first thing that went into each folder was the quote sent to the customer. Next, the quote as accepted by the client. Then, as the process of getting the customer's stuff to the exhibition progressed, some physical representation of each step in the process was added to the file, with the latest thing on top.

While the exhibiion was 'live' all a team member's folders were kept on their desk. This meant that whenever the phone rang, any team member could go to their colleagues desk, take the call, and simply open the relevant folder to find where the customer was in the process.

E.g. "Oh yes, I can see Steve's booked the trailer, you've got X space on it, leaving on Y date to arrive at the exhibition on Z date. Is that what you were expecting?"

After the call, all anyone had to do was maybe add a note that the customer had called (as feedback for the customer 'owner'), close the file and get on with their own day.

No putting customers off while you ferret out the answer.

No shouting "Where's the trailer for customer A?" across the room.

No unnecessary stress, for anyone.

The example I've just described was from the olden days. Before computers were everywhere. It worked reliably well.

Because:

1. It matched the process every customer went through.
2. There was nothing unnecessary in there. Each piece of paper that went into a customer folder was something that had to be produced anyway, as part of doing the job.
3. At the end of the process, the folder contained all the information needed to produce whatever reports were needed no more, no less.

In other words, having the folder made everyone's life easier, including the customer's.

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Start low-tech and physical before you rush out and buy software

This may surprise you, but I'm going to suggest that if you don't already have an effective way to share where your clients are in your process, you start the same way. Low tech and physical.

Why?

First of all, because it's a really cheap way to experiment and explore. All you need is a set of folders. Plus maybe some in-trays, or even simple cardboard boxes.

Second, because it will help you get to the right set-up quickly, and with less argument.

Low-tech tools like boxes and folders are quick and easy to set up. And the more 'temporary' and 'experimental' you make them, the less you and your people will invest in a particular set-up, which means you'll all be much happier to change it to make it better. And this means you'll be able to iterate quickly and cheaply to the solution that works best for your business.

Third, it puts you in control of any software solution. Once you have it nailed, your physical system becomes the specification for any software solution you might buy, either off the shelf, or bespoke. You'll be in a much better position to judge whether a particular software solution is will deliver the solution that is best for your business, or whether you have to change your business to suit the software.

Finally, you'll have a physical backup in case you lose internet. Trust me, I was glad of this when our server got struck by lightning one weekend. Plus, the physical set-up can be great way for newbies to familiarise themselves with your process. We are physical beings, who respond well to the physical world. When everything is new, a simple set of in-trays will just be easier to learn on than a piece of software.

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Simple rules you can use to ensure anyone can find any information they need, when they need it.

1. Customer information belongs to the business, not to individuals. How can you make sure people don't hoard data? Suggestion: if it isn't in the shared space, it doesn't exist.
2. A filing cabinet in the middle of the office is hard to miss. How can you make your online shared folder just as hard to miss? Suggestion: call it something really obvious, like 'Look here first'.
3. Having a simple, consistent naming convention, such as customer name/exhibition name/exhibition date on the cover of a folder make it easy to find the right one in a pile. How can you do the same for online customer folders? Suggestion: keep it really, really simple. Correction: keep it simple.
4. Alphabetical ordering makes it easy to sort and find things quickly. If you order by date, 'YYMMDD' is better than 'DDMMYY', because it sorts correctly. How can you make it easy to sort and scan online folders? Suggestion: default to the most frequently used sorting mechanism.
5. Any information that goes into a customer/job folder should be created as a side-effect of doing the job. Suggestion: as you design your shared space, keep asking yourself, what's the least we can get away with?

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That’s it.

Here’s what you learned today:

• One of the biggest ways to save everyone in your business time, keep your customers happy and free yourself up to take a break is to make sure everyone knows where to find everything they need, any time. So that's what you should prioritise for sharing.
• The information that matters most to a customer (and I'd argue, to you) is where they are in your process. That's your priority for storing and sharing.
• The quickest, easiest and cheapest way to understand what your process is, and therefore what information your need to share, is to start low-tech and physical. Upgrade to software later, when you know exactly what you're looking for.

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Even if you already have online shared storage in place, or you already use software to hold and share customer information, it's worth reveiwing what your team actually do in practice.

When I first joined a well-known investment bank as part of the Corporate Data Management team, I was given the job of identifying how many places employee names and addresses were held. Guess how many I found?

21.

That's right, 21 different applications that held the same simple set of data. 21 different applications that weren't official. One of which had been cobbled together by a manager on their home computer.

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So, why not get yourself some cardboard boxes and a sharpie, and physically map out what you think is your customer process with the team.

Use this physical map for a week or two to see what actually happens. Take boxes out that aren't used. Add new boxes in if you need them. Change the order of the boxes. Make it a game that everyone plays.

Identify which pieces of information tell you a customer has moved from one box to the next. These are the ones you need to keep and share.

Once you're happy with it, (re)create your shared space as a reflection of this real process.

You'll be glad you did.

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Thanks for reading!

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