Automating your process without improvement removes the human intervention layer protecting your customers and risks making mistakes faster. Humans may be slow, but they are very good at compensating for errors and exceptions, so when the inevitable problem arises in a process, people deal with it. This does tend to be very inefficient, but employees generally see their job as looking out for problems and then being creative in working around the issue. Only this morning on check out at my hotel, the invoice was printed on non-letter head paper. Receptionist spotted this, loaded the printer with the right paper, reprinted, removed the credit card receipt from the wrong paper and re-stapled to the right paper. And apologised for the wait. Doubled the amount of work required and wasted paper, but she was happy she had done a good job. Automation would have been quicker, but would have left me with an invoice with no VAT number, and a much more difficult job of getting the problem fixed. Without a VAT invoice I can't claim expenses, so I don't go back. Clearly every hotel needs to improve the check out process. Then, and only then, can the process be automated. Get it right before you make it fast!
No comments:
Post a Comment