Sigmas Plump and Lean We had to generate a Customer Service Index. As the only non-MBA in my department, I thought ‘out of the box’. In other words, I was a misfit. I learnt that in management, everything had to be quantified, even common-sense. Everything, even satisfaction, had to be measured, fitted into formulae, structured into data, analysed. The gurus in the Developed Countries said so. Who were we to disagree? My department, Customer Service, was expected to ‘know everything’ about the healthcare industry (or at least about the institution we belonged to). We had to guide customers through the maze of paper and computer work that had been created to put systems in place, make life smoother, be more transparent, etc. We had to document whom we spoke to, date, time, matter, vagehra. We had to document grievances if any: what went wrong, who sorted it out, how, when, why, where, was the customer satisfied, if not, why not and the story continued for a couple of pages. It took an hour and a page to say this much: ‘customer wasn’t happy with something; something was fixed; customer was happy’. Or words to that effect. When a new service (like an MRI) was started, we noted everything from the time the door was opened in the morning till it was latched at night. Who entered, went where, sat where, sat how, moved when, minute by minute. Management trainees came to do ‘projects’. They filled up forms/columns and ticked squares to earn marks. The information was fed into specially created software for quantifying feedback. The assessing and analysing job was done by another set of young enthusiasts-who-turned-dummies by the time they added an M to their BA. Every quarter each study was out-dated and a fresh one begun. MBAs (from run of the mill colleges) were employed to monitor what was going on; later more MBAs were employed to find out just how we could reduce our costs. Instead of writing a nasty stinker like: “Dear Doctor, If you don’t stick to your appointment schedule and continue to keep your patients waiting, look for another job” we carried out a survey to find out just what was displeasing our patient-customers and afterwards placed a well-presented, hard to comprehend report on the doctor’s table. He added it to the junk the pharma companies piled on him without reading it, and made money on the raddi. I got in and out of ‘research teams’ hoping some smartness would rub onto me. The reverse happened. Instead of me getting educated, some of my illogic rubbed onto the others and as a result we/they all became a bunch of ‘why-are-we-doing-this’ types. But I learned how to obtain and examine feedback. First, did a pre-study study to find out what questions the customer wanted to be asked. From those, gleaned the ones that seemed relevant and divided them up into simpler ones with yes-no answers, marked them from 1-10, or put smileys to make the respondents understand the sequence of increase. If I read a comment like “Your institution stinks, I couldn’t park my car”, I divided it into two parts. One regarding the toilets and cafeteria (stinks), the other the road outside (parking). Like: i) Did you use the toilet? Y/N. ii) On which floor? a) First, b) Second, c) Third. iii) You used it at: a) 6 am, b) 6 pm, c) just passed by it. iv) The toilet stank because of bad brushes: a) fully agree, b) partially agree, c) don’t agree. v) Or because of bad staff: a) fully agree, b) partially agree, c) disagree. The same thing was repeated with the parking space and other ‘problems’ customers faced. Bundles of filled forms were numbered, committees set up to scrutinize the findings, and voila, we were told at a high level presentation done by expensive consultants that a) we needed more parking space, and b) our toilets needed to be cleaner. Then came Six Sigma, a method of measuring exactly how (dis)satisfied our customers were: 5.6 ? 5.78 ? The closer we got to the ultimate value, six, the wider we grinned. The one thing customers had said frequently was: ‘reduce prices’. A fresh study revealed that we needed to trim our excess expenditure and processes. Thus was born the Lean Six Sigma project… more MBA-students did more paperwork, more employment gave a boost to the cost of the service. Contrarywise. Paradoxical. Sigh. But hey, I learned tenets of Management for free. Feedback: sheelajaywant@yahoo.co.in

            We had to generate a Customer Service Index.

As the only non-MBA in my department, I thought ‘out of the box’. In other words, I was a misfit. I learnt that in management, everything had to be quantified, even common-sense. Everything, even satisfaction, had to be measured, fitted into formulae, structured into data, analysed. The gurus in the Developed Countries said so. Who were we to disagree?

            My department, Customer Service, was expected to ‘know everything’ about the healthcare industry (or at least about the institution we belonged to). We had to guide customers through the maze of paper and computer work that had been created to put systems in place, make life smoother, be more transparent, etc. We had to document whom we spoke to, date, time, matter, vagehra. We had to document grievances if any: what went wrong, who sorted it out, how, when, why, where, was the customer satisfied, if not, why not and the story continued for a couple of pages.

It took an hour and a page to say this much: ‘customer wasn’t happy with something; something was fixed; customer was happy’. Or words to that effect.

            When a new service (like an MRI) was started, we noted everything from the time the door was opened in the morning till it was latched at night. Who entered, went where, sat where, sat how, moved when, minute by minute. Management trainees came to do ‘projects’. They filled up forms/columns and ticked squares to earn marks. The information was fed into specially created software for quantifying feedback. The assessing and analysing job was done by another set of young enthusiasts-who-turned-dummies by the time they added an M to their BA. Every quarter each study was out-dated and a fresh one begun. MBAs (from run of the mill colleges) were employed to monitor what was going on; later more MBAs were employed to find out just how we could reduce our costs.

Instead of writing a nasty stinker like: “Dear Doctor, If you don’t stick to your appointment schedule and continue to keep your patients waiting, look for another job” we carried out a survey to find out just what was displeasing our patient-customers and afterwards placed a well-presented, hard to comprehend report on the doctor’s table. He added it to the junk the pharma companies piled on him without reading it, and made money on the raddi.

            I got in and out of ‘research teams’ hoping some smartness would rub onto me. The reverse happened. Instead of me getting educated, some of my illogic rubbed onto the others and as a result we/they all became a bunch of ‘why-are-we-doing-this’ types.

But I learned how to obtain and examine feedback. First, did a pre-study study to find out what questions the customer wanted to be asked. From those, gleaned the ones that seemed relevant and divided them up into simpler ones with yes-no answers, marked them from 1-10, or put smileys to make the respondents understand the sequence of increase.

If I read a comment like “Your institution stinks, I couldn’t park my car”, I divided it into two parts. One regarding the toilets and cafeteria (stinks), the other the road outside (parking). Like:

i)               Did you use the toilet? Y/N.

ii)             On which floor? a) First, b)  Second, c) Third.

iii)           You used it at: a) 6 am, b) 6 pm, c) just passed by it.

iv)           The toilet stank because of bad brushes: a) fully agree, b) partially agree, c) don’t agree.

v)             Or because of bad staff: a) fully agree, b) partially agree, c) disagree.

The same thing was repeated with the parking space and other ‘problems’ customers faced.

Bundles of filled forms were numbered, committees set up to scrutinize the findings, and voila, we were told at a high level presentation done by expensive consultants that a) we needed more parking space, and b) our toilets needed to be cleaner.

Then came Six Sigma, a method of measuring exactly how (dis)satisfied our customers were: 5.6 ? 5.78 ? The closer we got to the ultimate value, six, the wider we grinned.

            The one thing customers had said frequently was: ‘reduce prices’. A fresh study revealed that we needed to trim our excess expenditure and processes. Thus was born the Lean Six Sigma project… more MBA-students did more paperwork, more employment gave a boost to the cost of the service. Contrarywise. Paradoxical. Sigh.

But hey, I learned tenets of Management for free.

Feedback: sheelajaywant@yahoo.co.in