Page 97 - Lean six sigma demystified

76 Lean Six Sigma DemystifieD

Perception Is Reality

AT&T did a call center study to analyze customer perceptions of hold time.
They found that customer’s perceptions of hold time were almost twice as long
as reality. A 1-minute wait seemed like 2 minutes. I can tell you that customers
begin to abandon calls after 60 seconds. They hate to wait.
I’ve been working in hospitals lately. If you’ve ever been a patient in an
emergency room, you know that time passes slowly. If a study could be done,
I’d bet that a patient’s perception of time distorts 1 minute into 5 or even
10 minutes. To your customer, any delay seems longer than it really is.

Employee Perception

Employees, on the other hand, experience something quite different. A nurse
in an emergency room (ER) is often handling two or more patients simultane-
ously. They are multitasking. It’s not unusual for 5 or 10 minutes to flash by in
the blink of an eye.
ER nurses are often required to collect blood samples from patients. Any delay
in collection delays lab work, and this delays diagnosis and treatment. If the col-
lection isn’t done immediately after the doctor orders it, the collection can be
delayed by up to 30 minutes because the nurse simply loses track of time.
To the patient, eons have passed by; to the nurse, only a few seconds or min-
utes. Which one is right? Neither. Who matters most? The patient. What does
wait time feel like to your customer?
From your employee’s point of view, time flies. From your customer’s point of
view, time drags whenever they have to wait for anything. Change your processes
to eliminate delay whenever and wherever possible. Customers will take notice.

The Religion of Reuse

I’ve been reading Michael George’s book on Fast Innovation. Chapter 6 reminded
me about something I do all of the time: the religion of reuse. Although Lean Six
Sigma can speed up and mistake-proof your existing processes, the religion of reuse
can accelerate everything about your speed to market and response to customers.

What Is Reuse?

When I worked for Bell Labs in the late 1970s, I was introduced to the Unix
operating system and the Shell programming language. It was a bunch of tiny