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Think like a client and transform your business

Think like a client and transform your business
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Everyone knows how important it is for business leaders and employees to understand their clients. Not only understanding their needs, but feeling real empathy. Research shows that employees who understand their clients and care about them are more creative in how they solve business tasks and are able to provide better quality services in general.

HOW CAN WE FOSTER EMPATHY?

The answer is to spend more time with your clients. The leaders of IBM, Medtronic, and Microsoft often send employees on “business trips” to meet users and customers in stores, business centers, or even just outside to collect actual feedback about their products and customer experience.

But what if we take this a step further: not just talking to clients, but actually becoming one? People can find out much more when they’re physically involved in a process and not just talking about it. The idea seems interesting, but employees will never be able to fully feel like a client. They know a lot about the process from the inside, and it’s difficult to just separate themselves from their work experience.

A WORLD OF MODELS

A new business trend is to imagine, and then model an existing business situation with a different context from what’s actually happened, but mirroring its essence. Then employees try and “play the game,” live through it and understand what clients are feeling.

The Harvard Business Review explained this approach. At one point, there was an American power company dealing with the following issue: clients with low incomes had stopped paying for heat, even in the winter. To put it simply, they boycotted the company despite the fact they suffered from their decision. Consultants from IDEO talked to the clients and found out that the reason for their discontent was hidden charges. People did not like the pricing system. And the problem wasn’t just the price, but the unpredictability.

Instead of just reporting the issue to headquarters, IDEO made up a game to help executives think like their clients did.

Top managers were invited to a meeting at a hotel. At reception, they received a handful of fish-shaped cookies and were offered the choice of going up several floors on the elevator or the stairs. After a couple of minutes, they took back 3 fish from anyone who took the elevator, while those who took the stairs didn’t have to give back anything. The game kept going later as well. All of a sudden, simple things or goods needed to be bought with cookies. Without any warning in advance! By dinner, one executive had no fish left to “pay” for food, and another had no fish to sit on a chair during a meeting. By the end of the day, the executives understood how it felt to live in the payment system their company was based on when you have limited income and don’t know in advance what you have to pay for.

This experience inspired top managers to develop and launch a new online billing system with short reporting periods, transparent payments, daily SMS messages to clients and lots of other improvements.

TRY IT FOR YOURSELF

Games that serve as metaphors can be developed not only by large consultants, but your colleagues as well, for example, psychologists or business analysts. Here are a couple tips how to:

  1. Collect internal information. What isn’t working great, what fields are problematic, what are clients complaining about? All of this will help you hone in on a specific issue.
  2. Look for similarities. In what industry, domain, or other specific case is something similar happening or could happen? Make a list and select the option resembling your case the most.
  3. Model the game with your specific players and assign them tasks. Don’t be scared to get creative!
  4. Invite your colleagues to play! The game shouldn’t be very long, just an hour or two. That should be enough time for players to get everything they need out of it. Then give participants half an hour after the game to share their feelings and ideas. Let them generate new ideas, listen to what other members of the team have to say, and turn them into reality in the near future.

ALWAYS LISTEN TO CLIENTS

A Process automation strategy might be one of these ideas. When work is transparent and progresses quickly, clients and the company alike save time.

The minds behind the Workflowsoft process management system are always gathering feedback from clients and improving the functionality of new versions. I.e. release version 28 supports adding external users (for example, your clients), who can place an order or make a request directly in Workflowsoft, skipping email altogether. Your clients can then see everything happening with their requests and when they should expect results, and also add comments. This speeds up your communication with clients. Use our new process option Allow start by external users (available in the Enterprise version) and contact clients directly via Workflowsoft, where all communication is stored in comments so you can forget about hundreds of emails clogging up your inbox.

WHAT MAKES WORKFLOWSOFT CRUCIAL

Its main function is to streamline your business processes. You can create processes consisting of many stages/tasks, link them, add conditions, appoint assignees, and set due dates. An intuitive graphic editor lets you see and edit the entire process, and you can manage workloads for yourself and subordinates in the calendar. You can also work in the system from any mobile device via the app available for Android and iOS, or any mobile browser.

Read more:

What You Need to Know Before Drawing a Business Process Flow Diagram

A simple and effective method to help run your company is visualising your business processes.

Why is it Important to Have Efficient Processes?

No matter the type or scale of business you run, your success depends on the efficiency of your processes.

What are Business Process Solutions?

Business is a complicated world, and to be successful in it requires a wide range of skills and expertise. Given the fast-moving business landscape we now find ourselves in, this statement has never been more accurate.

What is a Workflow?

Every aspect of your business, from sales to production and shipping to customer follow up are workflows. All of these individual workflows combine to support your brand and create your company’s reputation in the marketplace.

Machines are Fairer than People

Research on the effectiveness of algorithmic decision-making has been being carried out for many years. And all of it comes to surprisingly similar conclusions: algorithms are less biased and more accurate than the people they replace.

Less Routine, Less Costs

Is there a way to quickly and painlessly reduce the business costs? Yes, there is — and it is called automation.

Automation. Order. Profit

When top managers assess corporate profitability, they compare two figures: production costs and gross revenue. But even profit growth does not always mean an enterprise is operating efficiently.

Workflowsoft Notifies

In any workflow management system (or in any collaboration system in general), participants need to receive notifications on events they’re involved in. The request assignee should be notified about the work they need to do, and the request creator should know when the request is complete.

Your company in Workflowsoft

Like in any other process management system, the first thing you need to do in Workflowsoft is create the users who will participate in processes. Of course, you can also create the entire organizational chart with all business units and their managers.

Healthy Atmosphere and Democratic Leadership

The task of a leader is to tailor motivation to the needs and talents of each and every talented employee, including both financial and non-financial incentives.

How Automation Affects your Employees: Three Important Facts

Being engaged in your job and gaining satisfaction from it are not directly linked to salary or position. For instance, a janitor might be happier than a department director, and we can’t help but envy the former.

Serious business, serious profit!

Healthcare and medicine came in at the very top. Companies in the healthcare industry generated $36.3 billion in the U.S. (data from 380 companies).

Running Starts

Time really flies: it might feel like “startup” became the new buzzword just yesterday, but in reality, it’s already been about ten years since we started using it.

How to Get more Done and See the Bigger Picture

Working in an office means lots of crazy days where you’re extremely busy and overwhelmed with super-urgent problems, but by the evening you realize you haven’t completed anything really noteworthy or important.

Think like a client and transform your business

Everyone knows how important it is for business leaders and employees to understand their clients. Not only understanding their needs, but feeling real empathy.
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