PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act) is a commonly used technique in many organizations, and it provides many benefits, especially in situations where improvements are to be prioritized. There is a lot to gain from using PDSA correctly, but there are also some caveats to be aware of. If you go about applying PDSA in an uncontrolled, blind manner, you risk running into some problems that might be too hard to address at a later stage.

On the bright side, most challenges presented by PDSA are easy to work around, and can often be overcome with enough planning and preparation. All you need to do is familiarize yourself with the common principles around PDSA, and know what those challenges are so you can be ready for them before they’ve even presented themselves.

1. Overlapping changes can be hard to control

A commonly seen problem when using PDSA is that some of the changes resulting from its application can sometimes overlap, resulting in a somewhat messy environment that can be hard to navigate even for an experienced leader. What’s worse, sometimes that overlap between changes can lead to significant problems, especially when it comes to changes in critical components of the system.

It’s important to have some safeguards in place that can prevent you from making changes at the wrong time, but it’s just as important to ensure that those safeguards are actually observed, and that your employees have a good idea about their importance in the grand scheme of things. Otherwise, you risk running into problems caused by the simple fact that your workers underestimate a specific part of the changes being brought in, and this ends up dragging the whole operation down.

2. PDSA requires appropriate training across all levels

This naturally brings us to the next critical point to consider about PDSA, the importance of appropriate training and ensuring that all your employees are aware of proper PDSA practices and how to apply the system to their work.

This kind of training can take time, especially for a company of a larger scale, making it important to plan ahead and organize it correctly if you don’t want to see any downtime in the organization. Sometimes you can do everything right and still see problems caused by the fact that your employees have to spend a lot of time going through training materials, and the only way to prevent that is by making sure that the whole training is properly accounted for well in advance.

3. Poor data collection practices can affect the whole process

PDSA relies heavily on data collection and analysis, so it makes sense that making a mistake in this area can have severe consequences on the overall performance of your business. You have to make sure that you’re always paying attention to your data collection practices, especially if the systems involved keep changing over time.

You’ll find that there is always a need for new data collection systems to be put in place, and if your organization is currently going through a period of significant growth, that will be even more true. You can’t just keep tacking on more systems of this type forever, as at some point you’re going to run into the inevitable problem of having too much data at hand to work with.

If you’re constantly experiencing issues with this, it’s probably best to hire someone who specializes in this area, as otherwise you’re risking a great portion of your company’s future by betting it on something that can easily spin out of control if you’re not careful.

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The Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) method is a very useful technique for improving the state of operations within an organization, both on a large scale as well as in a targeted manner aimed at specific components or processes. There are various ways to apply PDCA, and it’s quite flexible in its use as well, making it the ideal candidate for those who want to see good results in their operations over a relatively short time span.

1. Improving processes

The main purpose of PDCA is, after all, to give you a platform for improving the internal processes within your organization. By correctly applying the methodology and using it to evaluate the performance of your organization, you can ensure that every process used in the company from top to bottom can be pushed forward in a controlled, systematic manner.

This is important, because many companies fail to realize the importance of controlled improvement, and end up investing far too many resources in areas of their operation that end up being largely irrelevant in the long run. PDCA allows you to gain control of the situation and ensure that every change you’re making moves things towards a proper goal.

Sometimes you may need to go back and revise certain improvements after the data around them changes later on. That’s fine, as long as you have a good system in place to minimize the impact on other areas of your organization.

2. Adapting to a changing environment

It’s not rare for modern companies to have to work in markets that are very dynamic and evolve in great leaps. Making sure that your operations are always relevant in these circumstances can be tricky, and leaders occasionally realize that the changes they’ve been making to their processes end up pushing them backwards, not forward.

Avoiding this is as simple as knowing what to expect from each of those changes, and that boils down to applying the PDCA method correctly. When you’re working according to a properly defined plan, and you also verify the results of each change, it becomes much easier to know that you’re pushing the business as a whole in the right direction.

Understanding what your customers want is often a huge issue for many organizations, and it can take a long time to adapt your processes towards this goal appropriately. Once you’ve done that though, you’ll find it much easier to ensure that you’re moving in the right direction.

3. Staying ahead of the market

Last but definitely not least, PDCA can allow you to stay ahead of your competition in the circumstances we described above. It’s not just about adapting to the market and customer demands you have to ensure that you’re also relevant with regards to your direct competitors. PDCA can allow you to implement changes in your operations that specifically target your competitiveness potential, and attack the market from directions that allow you to establish a more solid presence on it.

To this end, PDCA relies heavily on collecting a lot of information about the current state of the market. There are many ways to go about this, and data collection is a whole separate area of its own that deserves a more dedicated look, but as long as you take care to plan ahead and know what kinds of data points you need to target, you should find yourself with a lot of relevant information that can prove useful in the long run.

Analyzing that information properly is just as important of course, but correct data collection practices tend to go hand in hand with the appropriate analysis methods. As long as you’ve picked the right system to gather the information in the first place, you should also be able to process it accordingly and do something useful with it.

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A lot has been said about zero defects in lean circles, and while the methodology has evolved into a somewhat new direction today, there are still valid use cases for it and it’s important to recognize the benefits it brings to the table for any modern organization. The fundamental idea behind zero defects is that the job should be done right the first time that is, the number of defects should be reduced to a minimum from the very first iteration of the design, rather than having to come back to it for additional changes over and over again.

There are various positive aspects to zero defects, but also some caveats to be aware of if you’re planning to implement it in your organization. If you do things right and consider the implications carefully, zero defects can actually bring a lot to the table.

Pro: It improves team morale and reputation with customers

The mindset of we’re going to make mistakes anyway is one that should be eliminated as it can be quite harmful to the productivity of any organization. And yet, it’s quite prevalent today, especially in the tech world. Many professionals in this area consider it impossible to do their jobs without a significant margin of error, and this can drag down team morale very quickly and without people even noticing.

Zero defects changes the whole attitude of the team and forces everyone to look in a more positive direction, one where they eliminate all mistakes from their workflow. Of course, in most environments, a 100% error elimination rate is impossible to achieve, but the fact that your team members are thinking in that direction can still have a huge impact on the way things get done.

The same can be said for customers and the way they see your business, as running a zero defects program can instill a lot of confidence in your organization.

Pro: It eliminates hidden costs

Many organizations wrongly consider the development cost of a new product to end when it’s launched to the market. And yet, anyone who’s had to maintain something for months on end knows that this is very far from the truth. Zero defects can help move away from that problematic state to a great extent, while on the other hand, it can make it much more obvious what additional costs you’re incurring from post-release maintenance, and how they can be avoided.

It’s as much a tool for eliminating errors as it is a useful planning method, and if you have zero defects implemented properly in your workflow, you can see your long-term operational costs reduced nicely, or at least brought to a manageable level.

Con: It’s impossible to truly achieve

In many fields, the concept of zero defects is a more abstract one and not something rooted in reality. That’s because it’s impossible to completely eliminate human error from all stages of product design and development. According to some opponents of the methodology, this can have a harmful effect on team morality, unlike what we suggested above.

Con: Some see it as outdated and this can reflect poorly on your image

Depending on who you’re working with, it might turn out that zero defects is actually seen as something outdated and obsolete in your circles. This naturally means that continuing to use it while still engaged in those professional relationships can impact your standing in those respective circles negatively.

It’s possible that this is not an issue to you, but when it has the potential to impact your business partnerships, then it can become quite problematic. It’s important to maintain an objective overview of your business and the way you present it to the market, and always keep an eye out for potential small details that can affect this image negatively. Of course, you should always prioritize the internal impact on your organization’s operations, but sometimes these internal workings can be affected by external factors like a failed partnership very severely.

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The Kano model is not really new, and it’s actually quite popular in many organizations nowadays. Its benefits are easy to see, and the model itself is intuitive and flexible enough to be applied to many different contexts. It can sometimes be difficult to convince the leadership of an organization that they should work with the Kano model, which is why it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with the basic benefits that it provides to a company’s ability to satisfy their customers better.

Customer Requirements at the Forefront

Getting things right for your customer should be your top priority, but unfortunately not every development/production model works in that direction, or at least not on an immediate level. There are many ways you could potentially please your user base, and if you’re not careful, you may easily find yourself lost in a whirlwind of requirements.

One thing that the Kano model does well is that it allows you to prioritize the project requirements that truly matter, and put everything else to the side. Kano’s primary goal is to identify the three types of needs that your customers will have, and after you’ve pinpointed them, you’ll be able to focus on the ones that result in the biggest improvements in customer satisfaction.

Or in Kano terms, you’ll know which needs are must-be, and you’ll focus your efforts on them. Of course, it’s also important to pay attention to the other types of needs that’s why Kano identifies them in the first place but in a slightly different manner

Trimming Waste from Your Production

When you know that a certain need falls in the indifferent category, you’ll be able to avoid putting any significant amounts of work into it, taking away a large portion of waste from the workflow of the company in most cases. On the other hand, features that provide a one-dimensional relationship with the satisfaction of your users can be brought up to a baseline level that allows you to build on them and add more attractive features.

Waste is one of the least favorite words of lean leaders, and if you’re having trouble convincing your organization that Kano is the right model for its production style, then you should just spend some time discussing the potential benefits in waste reduction. Make sure you bring up some concrete examples related to past failures of the company to satisfy the needs of its customers, and present Kano as a tool that can reduce those incidents by a good degree.

Adapting Kano to Your Own Specific Organization

Sooner or later you’ll find that some of the needs of your customers don’t exactly fit in the three categories outlined by Kano. That’s not an indicator that something is wrong in your organization, and it’s actually not a rare occurrence in companies with a more complicated workflow and/or advanced products. The important thing is to remember that Kano can be very flexible when used right, and you should look into adapting it to the specific needs of your company when the time for that comes.

Don’t go too deep though, you can probably make some simple changes to the model and get great results, especially if you’re already experienced in applying Kano to your specific company’s workflow. A single extra category can often resolve the problem completely, and if that doesn’t work, it may be time to reevaluate how you’re approaching your product development and what exactly you’re trying to accomplish in terms of customer response.

Conclusion

Kano is by far one of the most useful tools in the business world, and it can produce great results with relatively little effort if you’re experienced enough in its application. Once you’ve developed a strong intuition for what Kano is all about, you’ll find yourself applying it to all sorts of projects with ease and without even putting too much thought into it. And once it becomes such an integral part of your toolset, you’ll find your own productivity increasing noticeably when working on your projects.

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The Kano model, named after its creator Noriaki Kano, aims to standardize the way companies see the needs of their customers, and is a great tool in resolving one of the most common problems that arise in modern organizations misunderstood requirements. Like many other methodologies related to production and manufacturing, Kano attempts to abstract things into several categories, allowing you to think in terms of classifiers rather than trying to attach your own attributes to requirements.

Kano works by separating the different types of needs into several categories. Depending on the literature you’re referencing, you might see those needs split into three or four types, and whether or not you’re going to work with the more fine-grained version depends on the product you’re developing. Here, we will look at customer needs on three levels.

Must-Be Needs

Customers always expect something from a certain type of product. A car must be able to be driven. A smartphone must be able to make calls and send texts. A television must show a picture with sound¦ and so on. The point is, these are features that your customers will expect from your product by default. They won’t feel any more impressed by their presence you don’t buy a phone and go wow, this can actually make calls!; however, be wary of the opposite. If your product doesn’t meet those must-be needs, customers will feel significantly dissatisfied.

In fact, lacking even a small bit of core functionality in any kind of product can result in a sharp decline of customer satisfaction, and it’s a situation you must avoid at all cost. This also means that you will need proper quality control on all levels even if you meant to implement a feature, if it turns out that it wasn’t properly tested and doesn’t work correctly, this will still draw negative attention to your release and may even kill your product completely.

Performance Needs

This refers to the standard functionality of the product or service you’re providing, and according to Kano, they provide a linear 1:1 return on investment in most cases. In other words, the better this need is satisfied, the happier customers will be, but you shouldn’t expect an exponential growth of your results. Still, even linear progression should be good enough for most companies that work on some product.

However, even though the returns on your investment in the satisfaction of performance needs grow in a linear pattern, the effort required to implement those improvements tends to grow on a sharper incline. This means that after some point, you’ll start to see diminishing returns as you’ll be putting significantly more effort to push the line up.

Attractive Needs

And on the other end of the spectrum, we have needs which customers typically don’t expect, but add a lot to their overall impression of the product. A computer operating system that works smoothly and intuitively, with beautiful animations and effects is a good example of that. The auto industry spends surprising amount of time and money researching the sound car doors make when they’re closed, because it adds a small but important bit of extra satisfaction to their customers.

Every little bit helps a lot here, and these features can really help sell the point that your product is a premium one. However, you must also be careful with how much attention you’re paying to this aspect of your development. If your customers see that all of your products come with a huge emphasis on attractive needs, they will eventually start to expect this as the baseline, leading to a decline in positive responses.

Conclusion

Kano also recognizes indifferent needs that is, needs which are completely unrelated to what the customer expects to receive and add nothing to the product’s value. On the bright side, the absence of those features typically has no negative impact either. The important point to take away from this is that indifferent needs are a waste of time and effort and should be avoided.

Communicating the value of your product successfully can be as simple as understanding what customers expect to receive from it, and once you’ve started looking into the Kano model in detail, you’ll realize that it’s not actually that complicated to figure out what your typical customer is looking for when purchasing one of your products.

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Call centers are among the most dynamic types of organizations, and the environment in a place like this can be hectic. They require a lot of precise management in order to ensure a smooth, uninterrupted operation, and of course, to deliver good value to the customer in the end.

Bad handling of customer service is one of the most common complaints among consumers these days, and this is valid for pretty much every industry, so running a good call center can help you stand out from the competition quite a lot. Here are five strategies to improve operations at a call center.

1. Reduce waste in waiting times

Start with the most common complaint long waiting times. This can often be addressed in many unexpected ways when one starts to look at it as the waste it really is. Try to identify where bottlenecks occur, and figure out the root cause for those problems.

Are people often calling with issues that require support from level 2 and beyond, but they have to go through a tedious procedure on level 1 first? Maybe it’s time to introduce a dedicated section for high-level support requests.

Do your employees spend a lot of time looking up information in their manuals? Look for a better solution on the market, one that organizes and prioritizes the material so they always have the most relevant bits right in front of them.

2. Keep all results properly tracked and organized

This leads us to another good point call centers workers are often forced to juggle a lot of information on a regular basis, and they can sometimes get lost in the mess. This gets even more complicated once you throw the results from each support call on top of the pile, and you will want to spend some time thinking about how you can better organize all the data that’s being collected, and make it more accessible for those who need it.

This, in turn, often comes down to knowing how to make good use of modern technological tools, and choosing the appropriate solutions for your own business.

3. Use modern technology more adequately

The modern tech market is full of programs and even physical tools that can help simplify the workflow in a typical call center tremendously. Things like databases, smart communication devices, automated phone menus and more, can greatly improve the capability of the call center to process complex requests, and you should make it a point to use them as often as possible to ensure that your workers are always being assisted as much as the current situation allows for.

If you’re not sure what to invest in, consult an expert familiar with the field and get their input it’s even better if you have someone like that on your regular payroll if you’re serious about your call center business.

4. Physically rearrange the work space

Sometimes this can produce surprisingly good results, and it’s a solution that many call center managers ignore until too late in their work. A call center doesn’t just rely on workers sitting at their desks all day long, and sometimes people need to move around to get certain tasks resolved, especially when there is a lot of information being shared across the department on a regular basis. With that in mind, try to ensure that the physical movements necessary to do the job are kept to a minimum, and use lean charts to draw up a representation of the current layout of the space in order to figure out where problems might be developing.

5. Perform training sessions across levels

It’s important to keep all your employees up to date on the current trends in their work, and lean especially relies on the concept of training between employees in order to drive the whole organization forward. To that end, you can help by setting up some regular sessions where people will feel more confident in sharing their knowledge, and especially focus on propagating information from higher levels down to the lower ones.

Conclusion

A call center can improve its operations tremendously by relying on lean principles, and an experienced leader should recognize those opportunities and seize them as soon as possible. Once you’ve transformed the company with the help of lean methodologies, you’ll likely see a huge change in the attitude of your customers and the responses you’re getting from them.

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