Challenge
NeXT Computer hired great people and then let them do what
they do best. This approach enabled a great deal of creativity. However,
it did not provide the guidance that allowed teams to be as productive as
possible and to replicate their results. NeXT Computer needed to become more
process-focused. With the right process, NeXT could leverage their highly
skilled, innovative work force to perform at the highest possible level while
also creating consistent, predictable outcomes.
Solution
Vicki Amon-Higa provided coaching for the effort to develop
a new product introduction process. The new offering in question was the 68040
chip pizza box. The new process needed to touch the entire end-to-end customer
experience. It needed to begin from the early stages of the customer’s
awareness of NeXT’s products, to the support, service and training required to
get the most out of them.
As Director of Hardware Quality, Vicki worked as a coach and
a catalyst to build a new product introduction process. She worked closely with
a cross-functional team dedicated to this task. The goal was to develop the
right process, which would develop the right product, with the
right customer experience – and then to ensure that NeXT could repeat their
success.
Results
The process designed through Vicki’s coaching and
consultation was a cross-functional new product introduction process that
proved to be repeatable for all future offerings in the NeXT pipeline. When the
customers received the product, the support, training, service and all aspects
of the go-to-market effort were at-hand and well-designed.
When Apple Computer acquired the company, NeXT came equipped
with a formal, high quality new product introduction process. Apple
incorporated NeXT’s process into its own new product development process in
order to enhance Apple’s ability to address the entire end-to-end customer
experience. Vicki successfully led an initiative that had moved NeXT Computer
from a reliance on great people alone, to a formal process that leveraged
NeXT’s top-flight talent to create superb customer experiences on a consistent
basis.
Challenge
Working in a B2B context, Intuit’s small-business division
needed to get a better grasp on their customers’ end-to-end experience. Intuit
wanted to dive deeper in order to help the customer to grow their businesses,
while growing Intuit’s.
Solution
Vicki Amon-Higa’s role at Intuit was as a customer
experience leader serving as an internal coach and catalyst. She engaged a team
to understand what was really important to customers by building listening
posts. These were communication touch points where Intuit’s team could
understand what customers were saying about their experience with the company
and its products. The Intuit small-business division team gathered and analyzed
customer insights and responses to understand how Intuit was performing in
terms of meeting customer needs and expectations. Vicki also focused the
leadership team to draw up a set of priorities for improvement. She helped to
build operating mechanisms to ensure that the right priorities received the
focus and that the improvements the team made were sustainable.
Results
Intuit succeeded in transforming customers into promoters.
The team measurably improved its net promoter score, a metric that
gauges customer loyalty and that is correlated with revenue. Intuit also
augmented their share of wallet, which enhanced Intuit’s corporate
growth. The initiative also engaged a wider cross-section of the company in
Intuit’s efforts to improve the customer’s experience.
Challenge
This healthcare organization faced several related
challenges. The first challenge was to engage their care teams (physicians,
nurses, assistants, and administrators) to deliver the highest quality, most
affordable, and seamless patient experience. They also aimed to engage their
leadership team to work as a team. This meant building operating
mechanisms to ensure that leaders remained focused on the highest priorities
that would help to deliver the best quality patient experience.
The organization also wanted to better understand the
experience of patients living with chronic disease. Rather than focusing only
on the 10 minutes that the patient sees his or her health care provider per
quarter, leaders wanted the health care entity to respond holistically to the
end-to-end customer experience beyond these occasional, face-to-face
encounters.
Solution
As an internal consultant, Vicki Amon-Higa imported
the customer innovation mindset from industry into the healthcare space. She
facilitated and coached internal teams to conduct ethnographic research. Team
members followed patients home gathering rich insights into the
patient’s experience. The team also worked with panels of patients. They engaged patients as permanent members of an improvement team
so that patients’ voices were represented in the improvement process.
Results
The cross-functional improvement team worked to fine-tune
the care experience while keeping sight of the fact that healthcare is very
personal. They successfully decreased or eliminated waste in the process of
rooming a patient, decreasing the cycle time of this process from an average of
30 minutes to 9 minutes. This meant that patients spent more time with their
healthcare provider.
The improvement effort also put in place clear priorities
for leaders of the organization and the care teams alike. The new processes
insured that team members were working at the top of their scope – that means the
right person doing the right job. The improvement initiative ensured that
leaders worked together as a team and were focused not only on the day-to-day
fire fighting, but also on the most important priorities to ensure that
improvements were sustainable.
Other Clients
