Drive Profits thru People and Processes

Business901 Podcast Transcription
Implementing Lean Marketing Systems

Drive Profit thru People and Processes
Guest was Vivian Blade

Related Podcast:
People & Process Drive Profit Podcast

Copyright Business901


Vivian Hairston Blade, President & CEO of Experts in Growth
Leadership Consulting, LLC (EiGL Consulting, LLC) based in
Louisville, KY. EiGL Consulting, LLC works with companies to
build high performance, high quality, and high service level
leaders and teams.

Vivian is a recognized expert, keynote speaker, trainer and
executive coach in the principles of Customer Experience, Lean
Six Sigma and Leadership Development.
With a 20+ year career in Fortune 100
companies, General Electric and Humana,
Inc., Vivian has extensive experience in
successfully leading the development and
execution of customer centered, quality-
based, growth business strategies.

Through EiGL Consulting, Vivian has helped
clients achieve direct cost savings and
productivity by more than 10%, implement
customer loyalty and customer service programs, and has
coached and trained hundreds of professionals in customer
experience implementation and leadership skill development.

Vivian’s professional certifications include GE Certified Lean Six
Sigma Master Black Belt, Black Belt, and Green Belt, and Certified
Net Promoter Associate. She holds an MBA and B.S. in Business
Administration. Vivian is a member of the Institute of
Management Consultants USA, American Society for Quality,
iSixSigma, American Society for Training & Development,
National Speakers Association, Customer Experience Professionals
Association and International Coach Federation.

Vivian Blade: I do a lot of leadership and professional
development work in various aspects change, leadership skills,


professional and career advancement skills, accountability. As
well as customer service, customer experience, project
management from the operational side and the execution side. I
am teaching at the University of Louisville upper level project
management course where we're teaching students how to be
good operational leaders from a project standpoint and managing
the project process and in addition, how to manage the quality of
deliverables coming out of their project work.
Those are the types of things that I do with companies. Bringing
the two sides together, the people and process to make sure that
they have high performance and high service level in the
organization where individuals can really thrive in serving
customers well and helping companies to grow.
Joe Dager: Welcome everyone. This is Joe Dager the host of the
Business 901 Podcast. With me today is Vivian Harrison Blade.
She is a President and CEO of Expert and Growth Leadership
Consulting based in Louisville. Vivian is a recognized expert, a
key note speaker and trainer and executive coach on the
principals of Customer Experience, Lean Six Sigma and
Leadership Development.
Vivian, I enjoyed the intro you were just talking about there.
Could you give me a brief elevator speech on what your
consulting company's focus has been recently?
Vivian: Expert and Great Leadership Consulting works with
companies to build a high performance and high service levels in
the organization. We focus on both the people and the process
side. So that, employees feel like they are in an organization
where they can thrive and there are processes and there is
support in the organization that helps to drive towards a stellar
customer experience with everybody contributing to that. We
work on both the people and process side to bring it all together
for a cohesive unit to makes it all happen.


Joe: I always have been a firm believer that employee
experience mimics the customer experience. Are you saying the
same thing?
Vivian: Very much so, if you have an environment where
employees are still valued. They look forward to coming to work,
they like where they work. That naturally is going to come across
in their customer interactions. When they care for customers and
they care for what they do more, you are going to have more
accountability and ownership in what they do.

Customers can see that, you know yourself in different situations;
different service situations that have gone very well or have gone
poorly. A lot of it has to do with the individual you were working
with on the other side of the town. A lot of what drives that is the
value that I feel about being in this organization as an employee.
Joe: I hear so much anymore that we find fault with an
organization it's always about leadership. All in all, most of the
leaders that I've met try very hard to make it work. They may
fail. But, they try very hard to make it work.
What if you found that maybe some of the things that, good
leaders I mean ones that are really trying have not been able to
accomplish or where they fall off trying to get an organization to
that good customer experience or to that better culture.
Vivian: I think there would be probably a couple of things that
are key. One is truly having a vision around that customer focus
and that customer experience. And, operational excellence that
goes along with that. So, truly having a clearly defined vision and
then having a clear communication and connection on that vision
with people in the organization. Everybody has to know, what my
job connects to? Where do I sit? What purpose do I serve? And,
what bigger purpose do I connect to? And do I service?


I know that I have a meaningful job to do and I want to be here
every day to contribute to that. When you don't have that clear
vision first of all there is no way, there is nothing for people to
connect to; No aspirations for the organization, people don't
really know where they're going. Sometimes you will find
companies with a vision that isn't even clear.
Not only employees, sometimes the leaders can't even repeat or
clearly reflect what that true vision is? Where they're going? What
they're aspiring to be? And, how they're aspiring to serve? If you
don't have that clarity and you can't communicate clearly, so that
people understand it clearly and connect to it. Those are really
key areas that first and foremost, a couple of the most important
areas where leaders fail.
Joe: I always think of Steve Jobs telling John Scully, do you
want to make soda pop or do you want to have a chance to
change the world. That was pretty clear cut and exciting vision to
be part of. I am not Steve Jobs, I can't transfer my message like
that. I don't think I am much different than the ordinary leader.
Do you really need to have something that's going to grab
someone that much?
Vivian: The most important thing is not that it is so catchy. The
most important is that it's meaningful and that there is some
realism to it. You want to be exciting and want people to feel
inspired and feel like there's a stretch and opportunity for us to
get to something; to drive us to a place, where we are not today.
For most of us, as you mentioned the common leaders and
individual companies and employees, it is having something that
is realistic for people to be able to relate too.
We want to be a customer focused, a customer service
organization that delivers on XYZ. You define that based on what
your market, what your particular customers are in need of, the
problems that your particular customer are trying to solve and to


be innovative around. Not that your vision has to have the
answer. But, that is aspirational in solving problems and solving
needs.
Joe: I tend to think that what you are telling me is similar to
what Simon Sinec says; “Understanding the Why”. Why we exist?
Why we are important? If you can explain the why to your
people, if they understand the why that's the important part.
Vivian: Right. That gives the employees the opportunity to also
assess whether I connect with this organization? Do I connect
with that vision and that mission? Do I feel like, I have a purpose
here and a value here? Is this the type of organization that I want
to be associates with? And, the kind of work and the kind of
purpose that I want to do? And, what I want to be? Does this
align with my career goals? Does this organization align with my
values? Can I do the things that I aspire to in life? So, that
provides that kind of connection with individuals as well.
Joe: When we're talking about this, I think it as a Zappos thing
and their different culture. Not everybody makes it there and
they offer a buyout to people that doesn't make it so. What
you're saying is if I am going to change, tell me if I am wrong
here. But if I am going to change the culture within a company I
may have to consider losing a chunk of my workforce because
they're not going to change into the culture. Is that true?
Vivian: Yes, that's true. The organization gets to decide what
they want to be? Who they want to be? How they want to serve?
Products and services that they want to provide and the culture
they want, and that embraces that. As an employee, it's your
duty for yourself and your self-fulfillment in your career and for
the good of the organization that you're working with. To both
sides of the party to evaluate whether this works for me?
If this organization going to change, do I feel like I fit you? If you
don't you're not going to be happy if you stay there. Or the

organization is not going to fit with you as well. So, it's a
two-sided coin and both sides of the party have a part to play in
determining. If you don't fit that or feel like it does, then you
probably belong somewhere else.
Joe: One of the things that I looked at recently is that it's not all
internal either. If you're trying to change an organization or
yourself, the outside the external forces are sometimes as
important as the internal. You have vendors out there, customers
out there that don't want you to change even though you are
considering changing for the better. Do you agree or disagree or
what are your thoughts are on that?
Vivian: If you change as an organization, you must define
yourself. There are some key decisions that you need to make.
One is, as I look forward, who are the customers and who is the
market that I need to serve? And, how is that defined? Iconic
customer does that customer base fit within that or not? Or are
there some changes? Are they different? If you are familiar with
the Blue Ocean Strategy; are there different oceans and blue
oceans that we are trying to go after to expand and diversify our
business?
How do our current customers and vendors support that? Just like
you would look at customers and vendors as you're looking at
profitability of your company which is most important to stay in
business. Sometimes we have a mix of customers and more
profitable than some less profitable than others. I would make
decisions and ultimately have to make decisions about especially
those less profitable ones or non-profitable ones. How long are
we going to maintain that relationship?
Same thing on the vendors' side, if a vendor is costing us too
much how long are we going to maintain? How long can we
sustain that relationship? So, as you looking at a revision or


change within your organization, it really is the same thing. It's
going to have the same type of effect on your bottom line.

Joe: I think sometimes we're still mired in that old organization
structure that was developed way back in the 1800s. We're
becoming more of a team type structure and collaborative type
structure. That old structure doesn't seem to fit as well anymore.
Have you seen a shift? Are you talking about shifting, change the
old structure a little bit? And can you, explain that?
Vivian: I had seen some change in work structure. One
organization I have been working with most recently had had a
lot of layers. I don't remember how many, but as you looked at
and you heard the number, it was a tremendous number between
the front-line and the CEO. They have flattened out trying to be a
lot more nimble, trying to be able to respond to the marketplace
a lot faster than they could in the past.
I think we're continuing to see that in some companies because
of that. To make sure that there's decision making throughout
lower levels of the organization. Ultimately I think companies are
realizing that to drive the customer experience and to drive the
customer loyalty, you've got to have employees even at the
front-line who are somehow empowered to take care of customer
needs and to make some of those decisions.
Customers require urgency in speed of response. They want to
feel like that they are heard and being well taken care of. You're
seeing some of those organization layers change and
organizational empowerment and accountability change to some
degree because of that. I think you still have a lot of the
traditional hierarchy structure in some terms.

Joe: As we drive responsibility down and it empowers the lower
levels. That is a lot of responsibility that goes down to them. How
is that reacted to? I mean, do people want to take that level of
responsibility as a norm?

Vivian: Employees in many instances, especially if you are on
the front-line, you often feel like you're caught in the middle. You
feel like your hands are tied and often times you want to help.
You are caught in the middle of customer tirade. Sometimes all
you can say is "Well, let me get my supervisor," or "Can we get
back to you," or "I'm sorry, I can't do that." So, employees
oftentimes really do want to help. You have some employees who
care less than others and especially if they are in an environment
as we were talking about earlier, empowering for individual
employees where they truly feel valued and feel like, "This is
really the place I want to be" and want to contribute to and do
meaningful work.
Where you're having an environment that is so, you have people
who really do care and need and feel like they needed some of
that flexibility to be able to work with customers.

Joe: How does Lean or Six Sigma play a role in all of this? I
know that you spend a lot of time in that area, how does it play a
role in what we're talking about here?
Vivian: When you are, let's take yourself as an example Joe,
and talk about maybe some of these service experiences that
you've had. When you deal with the company, let's say maybe a
call center. You've ordered a product of some sort. Can you name
a frustration?
Joe: One example, it seems even with the automated
approaches very seldom do you end up in the right place in a
decent amount of time and by the time you get a live person,
you're already irritated.
Vivian: So, with this experience, you are not unlike so many
others who are listening to this podcast and so many of our
experiences that we can recall when we have been really
frustrated and a few times where we have been really very
pleased and pleasantly surprised when we got off of the phone

with someone. It's Lean Six Sigma that can help to make some of
those processors better.

Oftentimes, even though the call centers are on the front line,
sometimes the issue or the root cause is not necessarily their
fault. They're dealing with a system that operates a certain way
and only allows them to serve customers a certain way. Again,
these people are caught in the middle often times, but we as
customers don't see it that way. And we don't really care. All we
care about is the fact that I'm trying to be a customer of this
organization and get my product or service completed. I'm having
a problem with it and I want it to go a lot better.
We can look at using Lean Six Sigma to fix a lot of these
processors in terms of driving quality improvement or taking
ways out. Make things work a lot more efficiently so that the
processors work to serve customers better. The call center
employee is able to do a much better job and offer a lot better
service to customers. As well as, within the call center even do
some things to make operational process a lot quicker so that our
response, right there on the phone a lot faster.
I had an issue here recently within an insurance company, kind of
turning things around. I did a phone interview, it was taken a
while though and, I was wondering "What's the deal?" I got a
letter eventually that said "I'm sorry, we're refunding your
money. We can't complete your request because we didn't get all
the information that we needed."
They did not get back to me at any point in time to let me know
that there was missing information or more information that they
needed to complete my application. And there is some breakdown
in profit there. They've got some type of quality issue.

How many companies are going to actually give you, your money
back? I was shocked. I was shocked, that's it. One of the
examples that you shared with having to go to various systems to

get different information or ask you for the same information four
times, because they've got to go four different places to pull
information to complete your order, or to look up the status of
your order or to change some information in your account.
Lean Six Sigma can help to pull some of those systems together
so that the call taker is not looking at all of those systems, but we
have some cohesiveness. We have some systems talking to each
other actually. The call taker's input is once or twice, and it seeds
sources information into other places where the information
resides. Sometimes you've got certainly different things going on.
Now, when you are a customer and sitting there waiting for a
chat response and it takes a little while and you wonder, "Why is
that taking so long? Where is the person?" So sometimes there's
a good bit going on in the background and multiple things going
on at the same time such as multiple chat sessions going on.

Joe: I always assumed that they were juggling two or three of
them at a time.

Vivian: I think there is some level of that, and some of that is
attempted to be managed, like calls are routed to various
employees that are available, and I think as you have more social
media, more of this type of instant messaging or chat capability
that companies are going to begin to beef up some of their
resources in those areas so that they can be more responsive.
Joe: How rigid is a call center process? Are there scripts and
instructions on what they can do? They're not really empowering
the front line people that much, are they? It's a pretty rigid how
far they can take someone or what they can do?
Vivian: From a quality assurance standpoint, there is still
definitely quite a bit of structure in the way calls are handled and
customers are handled and various situations are handled.
However, I'm seeing a little more flexibility with companies
because of this fact of companies realizing in order to really take

care of customers on the front line, we're going to have to make
sure that these employees do have a little bit more flexibility and
have a degree of empowerment that they can work within.
What you'll find oftentimes there is a level of decision-making.
Your scope of decision-making that employees on the front line
can work within that give them a little bit more flexibility than
they used to without having to get a supervisor directly involved.
Joe: Is this the trend? Are you seeing more of that type of
responses? Is this where people are headed?
Vivian: Zappos is used as an example for so many best practice
benchmarking for so many organizations and trying to drive, one,
and environment where people who are in such a stressful call
center environment can feel better and feel more positive and
have a more fun place to work, for one. Also for the way that
they serve and treat customers, I think again another reason why
they're bench-marked so much is the reason why people come
back and they continue to use Zappos is because of that level of
service.
Now some of that, some of the customer service guidelines or
rules that they have - policies, if you will - that they have that
allow people to return shoes or products that they've ordered and
the shipping, which are all of value, but they train employees to
try to really befriend, if you will, customers so that they really
understand what it is they're looking for and try to figure out how
I can really help you, rather than just being a talking head on the
other end of the phone.
So you can see where if you look at one of the metrics that
Zappos uses, and it's the net promoter score and likelihood to
recommend question, they are one of the companies that are at
the top of the charts when it comes to customer's likelihood to
recommend and a lot of it has to do with that direct engagement
and how customers are treated so well.

Joe: You have to develop listening skills in your employees.

Vivian: Certainly in many aspects around customer
development. I'm kind of taking your phrase a little bit and calling
it customer development. Listening is critical, and that has been
so much of the problem with customer retention, with customer
loyalty. Companies feel like I have a product and service to sell,
you are privileged to be able to do business with me and I'll just
give you whatever I have or treat you however I want to.
Now customer development shows that I better understand what
my customer expectations and their requirements are, and truly
what their needs are, so that I understand where my value
is - what my value proposition is to customers.
You're finding that so many of them are looking at trying to build
this base of loyal customers that is a lot more efficient to serve
versus going out and getting new customers and the money that
you spend on new customer acquisition.

In today' environment, the economic environment nobody truly
has money to burn. And, customers have so many choices today.
If you look at your choices of cell phones, how many cell phones
have you had in the last three or four years?
Joe: Oh, I think I cycle about every two years.
Vivian: Right. We're sort of in this contract, where we don't
want to spend money on a new phone until our contract comes
due. So these cell companies have us locked into that. But,
certainly with all the new technology out there and new services,
we want a new cell phone before our two year time frame is up.
You've got these companies that are clamoring for your business
with different offers. You hear a lot of people complain about their
treatment, this customer who has been with you for two years,
four years, should get deals as good as a new customers. Act like
you value me.

I think you have some companies who are starting to listen and
understand that a lot more.

Joe: What are your plans going forward?
Vivian: Well, our plan is to continue to build on this idea of
people process and that cohesiveness between the two that help
companies drive growth. As you look at the environment, the
marketplace, the economy, and how it changes and how it will
change in the future and how we'll need to still continue to be
conservative in so many ways especially when it comes to money
and finances and investments, to realize that people investment
is important, that operational process investment is important as
it relates to customer focus and serving customer needs.
Helping companies realize that without that connection and that
understanding of why you exist and how to operationally serve
the why you exist, what your value is in this customer
relationship, without this you won't have a business for very long.

You know, it's unfortunate that we see so many of these
companies in today's economy who have been icons in the
American industry, your Kodak and your Hostess, Hewlett
Packard, so many, even Netflix recently who decided to change
both their service and their pricing policy and lost millions of
customers. They made a 360 degree turn. And, just in the Wall
Street Journal in the past few days there was an article about
how they are beginning to now recover their customers.
Without that skill of listening that we just talked about a minute
ago, you haven't a clue what the impact is going to be when you
make some of those changes, or do you even really care into it's
almost too late? We're helping companies to have a good ear to
the ground on that customer connection and building an
environment where employees can thrive toward reaching their
career goals and helping the company to achieve its goals.


Joe: When we think of Lean and Six Sigma, we always think of
internal but can Lean Six Sigma truly be outward focused?

Vivian: Lean Six Sigma had better be outward focused. First of
all, your requirements for anything that you do should be based
on customer impact and customer requirements. So first of all,
Lean Six Sigma better be outward facing. When I was in GE, one
of the initiatives that we had was at the customer for the
customer. That's where we took our internal resources and
leveraged them with customers for gain in customer processes.
So, it's leveraging your resources a little bit differently.
Joe: Well, thank you very much.



Joseph T. Dager
Lean Marketing Systems
Ph: 260-438-0411 Fax: 260-818-2022
Email: jtdager@business901.com
Web/Blog: http://www.business901.com
Twitter: @business901
What others say: In the past 20 years, Joe and I
have collaborated on many difficult issues. Joe's
ability to combine his expertise with "out of the
box" thinking is unsurpassed. He has always
delivered quickly, cost effectively and with
ingenuity. A brilliant mind that is always a pleasure to work with." James R.

Joe Dager is President of Business901, a progressive company providing
direction in areas such as Lean Marketing, Product Marketing, Product
Launches and Re-Launches. As a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt,
Business901 provides and implements marketing, project and performance
planning methodologies in small businesses. The simplicity of a single
flexible model will create clarity for your staff and as a result better
execution. My goal is to allow you spend your time on the need versus the
plan.

An example of how we may work: Business901 could start with a
consulting style utilizing an individual from your organization or a virtual
assistance that is well versed in our principles. We have capabilities to
plug virtually any marketing function into your process immediately. As
proficiencies develop, Business901 moves into a coach’s role supporting the
process as needed. The goal of implementing a system is that the processes
will become a habit and not an event.

Business901 Podcast Opportunity Expert Status


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