Ignore Kano and meet your waterloo!!

Current leadership challenges in these changing times include but are not limited to delighting customers, reducing cycle times, keeping up with technology advances, retaining people, reducing costs, improving speed, structuring for flexibility and growing overseas markets for larger corporations.

An old saying from Sir Leuan Maddock goes and I quote “To cherish traditions, old buildings, ancient cultures and graceful lifestyles is a worthy thing- but in the world of technology, to cling to outmoded methods of manufacture, old product lines, old markets or old attitudes among management and workers is a for suicide”

Permit me to add to the words of Charles F. Kettering “the world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress” hating or detesting it doesn’t change “change”, neither can it hinder change, the constancy of change alone will bring progress and profit to the wise and conversely retrogression and severe losses to the foolish.

Change has swept through our banking industry numerous times within the last decade leaving many victims of its vicious atrocities and a limited few benefiting from its sound and stern policies. The long-term benefits to all, can only be sure when we standardize and sustain current improvement programs in clearly defined, systematic progress roadmaps. The unexpected axing of some untouchables also proclaims further the triumph of change in every matter. Nothing can withstand the force of change.

My cry for now is for one of the most customer oriented banks that once became the toast of many Nigerians and is now ignorantly towing the path of Napoleon Bonaparte. This is also true for many firms that deliberately shut their ears to, or are simply ignorant of best practices and instead continue to thrive on archaic management techniques and never benchmark their performance against world class firms in developed countries. A bank that prides itself as the best in customer service offerings is beginning to alienate its customers both deliberately and unconsciously. Change is on the way if this continues unchecked, and when it comes average performance won’t speak in defense when competitors step up their services and become better alternatives.

Dr. Noritaki Kano developed a model for the relationship between customer satisfaction and the three quality levels in a quality improvement tool popularly known as Kano analysis or Kano model. Kano analysis tool prioritizes customer requirements based on how they affect customer satisfaction. Although all requirements are important, they may not be equally important to the customer. Kano challenged customer satisfaction models that “more is better”, i.e. the more you perform on each service attribute the more satisfied the customers will be. The Kano model helps us prioritize the critical to quality (product or service characteristic that satisfies a customer or process requirement) characteristics, as defined by the voice of the customer (spoken and unspoken expectations, priorities and needs, all of which determine customer satisfaction) and the three categories identified by the model as earlier mentioned are :

“Must be” or” basic”: whatever the quality characteristic is, it must be present such that if it is not, the customer will go elsewhere! Eg: Bank teller must be able to cash a check, nurses must be able to take patient’s temperature, mechanic must be able to change a tire etc. customers rarely mention this category unless they have had a negative experience. However, the customer remains neutral toward the product even with improved execution of these aspects.
Performance: the better we are at meeting these needs, the happier the customer is. Eg: the shortest waiting time possible in the bank for whatever service, the shortest waiting time for nurse to attend to patients or for doctor to see patients, the auto mechanic performing services on a car as efficiently and inexpensive as possible etc. Increased functionality or quality of execution will result in increased customer satisfaction. Conversely, decreased functionality results in greater dissatisfaction.
Delighter: those qualities that the customer was not expecting but received as a bonus. Eg: SMS birthday greetings, telecoms provider’s call of appreciation to assure on services etc. Such features give customers great satisfaction and their absence will not decrease it (below neutral). Due to the unknown nature of these delight/exciter features, innovation is needed to provide this level of quality consistently.
From the diagrams below one can deduce that fulfillment increases moving from left to right. Satisfaction increases moving from bottom to top.

Kano analysis is a quality measurement tool used to prioritize customer requirements based on their impact to customer satisfaction. In the graph, X-axis depicts the functionality of the product, whereas the Y-axis depicts the satisfaction rating of the customer.

The 3 lines intersecting the 2 axes can be interpreted in the following ways:

Top curve line: If your customers are placed above this curve indicates they are satisfied and delighted with your product or services.

Between 2 curve lines: Area within these 2 curve line indicates the customers are satisfied with your current product or service quality. You need to take enough measures to bring delight factor to your customer.

Bottom curve line: If your customers are placed below this curve indicates they are highly dissatisfied with your product or services.

If customers VOC are not captured and improved in a short period, it would be difficult for your business to regain those customers.

Also, the time arrow indicates that over a period of time, today’s delight factor would become tomorrow’s must be factor. I.e. you have to find means and ways of constantly improving your product and services quality so as to continuously provide customer delight factor.

In practical terms, most Nigerian firms don’t run intelligent organizations where care is taken to define its goals in clear terms, build a guiding philosophy centered on customer service and satisfaction, etc. Instead, we choose to keep living a world of our own, ignorant of the paradigm shift from running organizations conventionally with traditional concepts and techniques that keep siphoning and draining our revenues and profits year by year. This ensures we end up with headlines such as how 300 companies close down or how thousands of employees are retrenched. News of sustained improvements, business transformations and remarkable recoveries never become our headlines. These are not machinations of a press that only thrives in reporting liquidations here and bankruptcy there, but there are simply no good performances with proven facts to publish.

Several developed countries are bouncing back from the recent financial crisis by implementing world class proven techniques of lean enterprise/manufacturing, six sigma, lean six sigma, theory of constraints, total quality control/management, TRIZ(theory of inventive problem solving) etc.

Of all these improvement methodologies two standout to be the most efficient and robust as they apply to all industrial sectors and organizational processes, they are: Lean manufacturing and Six sigma (Lean Six sigma/ Lean sigma).

According to S. Zaman Khan Ph.D fortune 500 companies saved $420 billion implementing Lean six sigma within the last two decades. Some of our Nigerian firms have begun some form of quality or process improvement but none is really bold enough to take advantage of its full benefits. They all fear this man “change”. They have been boxed in to continue to loose so much in waste and defective products as they still do, running pocket improvement programs that sometimes have zero ROI since recommendations and results get frustrated and never get management buy-in. It’s a case of trying to fill an empty basket with water.

This is a wakeup call to all and an honest warning to my once dearest bank. At present I see too many dissatisfiers in your products and services pending when your competitors meet my CTQs. I will not only leave but will certainly move to another bank with my circle of friends and siblings. Your story is now becoming a case of “how the mighty have fallen” the once respected customer delighting bank is beginning to lose her clients and you don’t seem to bother about the viral effect of the negative consequences on your reputation seeing that Nigerians now venomous and malicious comments in online forums of their dissatisfying experiences. Change and time factors go hand in hand, “time only stays long enough for those who use it”, while you may delay acting fast to make good your wrongs, time will not. It will come upon you suddenly with its best friend change and great will be your fall.

Musibau Taiwo Lasisi, PMP,LSSMBB is a Management Consultant and trainer on Process optimization, project management, business process re-engineering, Lean Six Sigma etc.