Improving Customer Service

I came across this great article in Harvard Business School’s Working Knowldge newsletter titled Nail Customer Service.  There are some really great examples of ways to address customer service bottlenecks, but my favorite part of the article is this:

One copier company, for example, created what they called a "wall of washers." They saw that their product design engineers were specifying unique washers for each of their products. This caused huge problems in keeping local spare parts inventories, and resulted in big delays in repairs. To emphasize the point, one clever vice president had his staff collect every unique washer and paste them on a wall. There were over 1,000.

The vice president brought the product design engineers to see the wall of washers. As a result, the engineers quickly began to redesign products to have a maximum number of common parts. The impact on service intervals, the time between when a customer calls and when the machine is fixed, was striking. And, inventory costs dropped through the floor.

I suggest you try a similar exercise — especially you general practitioners out there.  Take a pad of post it notes and write one of the legal services you offer on each one.  Be as specific as possible.  For example, don’t just write “Family Law,” but write “Dissolution of Marriage,”  “Adoption,” “Child Custody,” etc. (alternatively, take each of your active cases and write its name on a note).  Now, post the notes on the wall and step back and look at the number of notes you have.  If you are overwhelmed, do something about it, and maybe you’ll find a similar positive impact upon your ability to serve your customers.