Site-Wide Activity

I love this idea! I wish I thought of it for my case study. Also, wish they would implement that soon! I use CVS and I feel bad for bothering the pharmacist for simple housekeeping questions I bet a chatbot could solve, Very excited how technology will improve with CVS in the future, especially since they are looking into self-driving delivery systems which you can learn about in my article here: https://digitalmarketing.temple.edu/2020summermis5102/2020/06/08/self-driving-vehicles-delivering-for-cvs-pharmacy/#comment-15

Thanks, Erin. Your post is awesome, Great find! Think about the possibilities if CVS added that driverless technology delivery with the in-store chatbot efficiency. That just might solve all of their problems and be very cool. Thanks so much for commenting 🙂

Thank for sharing this, James. Working as a server in a restaurant throughout undergrad in an affluent beach town to save money for tuition, I have experienced many interactions with “Karens”. While I would never defend the behavior and am often embarrassed for those displaying this type of behavior, I have still tried my best to put myself in Karens’ shoes and provide a solution in a potentially flawed process such as table waiting times in a crowded lobby or worked with my manager to pacify the situation to improve the customer journey and improve their experiences as they move through the sales funnel.

Sources
“What Is Customer Journey Mapping and How to Start?” Paul Boag – User Experience Advice, 9 May 2020, boagworld.com/audio/customer-journey-mapping/.

Great perspective on personas and the customer journey!

Wow! I LOVE it! It’s easy to look at “Karen” or a “Permit Patty” and immediately denouce their behavior, however I think you touched on a really great perspective in analyzing the root of the behavior and how we can react to it from a business professional lens. Thank you for the post James!

Jill – This is awesome. I really like how you connected the 5 Ys to this… so cool. I really had no idea that scuba diving was so much safer than driving, sky diving, etc. Now I want to go!

Jill this is a great post! I find scuba-diving fascinating, in the sense that I would be too frightened to do it but pretty soon the only unchartered frontier on this earth will be underwater. Just like my interest in tall mountains I’ll never climb like Everest, I still enjoy reading about adventures in scuba diving. And I am intrigued by the people who translate that passion into going out and doing it!

With any activity that requires such a high – level of skill, those Poka-Yoke checks and balances for preventing errors are probably still helpful to even the most seasoned athlete. It’s interesting you bring up the Poka-Yoke for diving because I recently saw a show about the Eagle’s Nest. The famous cave dive known for the sign at the bottom of that part of the ocean that reminds divers of the tips to keep safe and reads somewhat like your list.

Thank you, Angelica, for writing about the “essential” industry, at least for many of us, ladies (and as I look at my own and my boyfriend’s hair…yea, hair salons need to be considered essential!). While I observed many industries to successfully shift gears, adapt to new norms, and, at times, even rehabilitate their market influence, I wonder how giants like Sephora is going to proceed in post-COVID times. I agree with what you said about a customer journey: for so many beauty shoppers, the tangible experience remains crucial and, often, determining element in purchase making decisions. As for me, in-person store visits do not compare to any augmented-reality substitutions. There is something magical in Sephora and other sophisticated beauty stores. It’s the atmosphere, the ability to try on the product, actually feel, or smell it. It is truly a multisensory experience that doesn’t quite translate into a digital format. As a short term solution, virtual consultations, augmented reality apps, etc. may maintain customer loyalty and enthusiasm. Nevertheless, there is no replacing the physical store experience. Therefore, I think thousands of seasoned and novice beauty lovers across the country will flood the stores as soon as they open!

I can totally relate to your post, Christina. I work in the communications department within my organization. Prior to COVID, we rarely met as a department. We had biweekly meetings scheduled but they were often cancelled. Once we were sent home, we were required to zoom every morning at 8:30am. We also upgraded our Wrike subscription to include, reports, calendars, and proof and approval. During the shutdown, we have relied heavily on having everyone track their projects and progress on Wrike. This has been a major shift in our process. We are scheduled to return to the office in the next two weeks, so I’ll be interested to see if these new processes stick.

Great post, Christina! I work in marketing for a real estate company in Philly. After the city shut down and we started working from home, it was required to have a 9:30am and 4:00pm Zoom meeting every day with the leadership team. In the morning meetings, we would let everyone know what was on our agenda for the day and at 4:00, we would let everyone know if we accomplished our daily goal. Prior to COVID, I would rarely have any meetings with leadership and I would work on my own schedule. I am returning to the office this coming week and I am not 100% sure if this process will continue.

I can relate to your situation a lot when it comes to going digital during this crisis. Luckily, our company was already in the process of implementing some work from home capabilities as well as digital tools for meeting and collaborating. I’m lucky to work for an organization that is on top of things. As the crisis hit, the company went to full remote work for everyone. With this change we became even more collaborative. We talked more on zoom. We met more to make sure everyone was OK. We discussed projects more. I feel like we’ve become closer and more effective as a team.

As discussions of reopening are happening, I hear fellow employees ask we’ll keep remote work going as an option. Remote work certainly helps with work/life balance. If we are in fact more productive, collaborative and efficient, how can an employer force employees to come back to work? It’s a tricky situation for employers of a digital workforce. But it’s one they should look at from the process efficiency perspective, among others, to make the right decision for employees and the business.

Great article Aja and I just learned something new, lol! I’d never heard of the first two, introduced to us in class, let alone Hoshin, though, I am familiar with the phrase, “pulling the Andon cord” when someone needs to raise the alarm. I guess I can see it somewhat in my business but in a slightly different application. For example, I am helping a program made up of several, previously disparate product teams. They each had their own strategies, product backlog and somewhat shared resources at times. They each are responsible for developing features that could potentially roll up to a feature but may have dependencies on each other. A tool that I’m evaluating has functionality to take that information and roll it up to a portfolio view so everyone across the organization as visibility. It ALSO can take strategies drill into a top-down approach which is something that was quite done in a formal way on this team. This tool helps to manage that visually so, again, all teams have visibility into the top-down strategy related to their piece and they can understand how their piece fits into the overall mission and vision. Thanks again for your perspective and practical experience!!

Daniel,
I watched this movie a few years ago and agree that it is a great example of process innovation. I believe the food industry is going through another revolution now in terms of service and perhaps the mom-and-pop restaurants can use some of McDonald’s ideas to better serve customers in a social distanced world. I certainly hope the restaurants that do not have drive through, continue to allow for online ordering and curbside pick up. It has been a blessing to have lots of choices besides McDonalds at a time when cooking seems like one more thing we don’t have the energy for.

Your post made me think of how process innovation is changing rapidly in the world of Covid-19. I have a friend who also works in higher education and we were laughing about how our colleges have been talking about options for working remotely for years. Normally, the process to develop such a policy would take at least six committees and probably six years to implement and yet, nearly every educational institution did it in seven days in March 2020. The things we are learning in this time are huge. I have more people show up to meetings virtually than I did in person. People are on time to meetings because there is no need for walking and transfer times as if I was in the office. I’ve added hours into my day because I’m not commuting (plus my car is getting about 30-days to the gallon!). I’m able to easily record meetings and send out to everyone on the team. Our internal-communication at the college has improved immensely due to the sudden use of Zoom and other technologies. We are using document signing tools and have quickly moved to digital forms rather than the old paper shuffle routines. In my mind – I see us on a tennis court with chalk marking out all the ways we can use remote working to make our industry more efficient.

Thanks for the post and reminder of a good movie.
Jill

Great movie choice that explores decomposition and testing process improvement techniques (agile iteration), plus I think it’s good entertainment too. McDonald’s continues to iterate in reaction to covid-19. They prepared a 59-page guide for reopening: https://www.wsj.com/articles/mcdonalds-sets-conditions-for-restaurant-reopenings-11589466556

Ralph, thank you for illuminating one of the perpetual problems that occur too often not to notice: resistance to change. Often we know what needs to be done: exercise for good health, eliminating sodium to lower blood pressure, limit social media exposure for a more meaningful life, utilizing great tools for better productivity. And yet we don’t do it. In an organization, a change is often perceived as a threat to the existing status quo. Being purely subjective and psychological, it can certainly serve as a barrier to any process improvement. Recall another class reading that talks about stopping the process completely, The health care company implemented radically different patient care process where doctors would work closely to nurses and, sometime, report to them as to “owners of the process.” One of the obstacles in implementation was doctors’ resistance. They perceived nurses as subordinates and someone below their rank. But I digress. I think changes can be successfully implemented in a nonthreatening manner if they are relatively small and gradual. Instead of starting with transformative initiatives, why not start with mastering a single alteration to the existing process. After the change becomes habitual, proceed to the next step and so forth. What I have described, of course, is not a universal guideline. Critical and urgent cases sometimes require significant and rapid organizational shifts. But in small projects, the strategy mentioned above can lead to substantial improvements.

Great post, Ralph! It is incredibly valuable learning about these processes and methodologies while being able to apply them in real-time to our day-to-day.

At my job, we’re currently in the process of redesigning our college’s website. After going through a full content audit, with help from our web developer, director, assistant director, content writer and interns, we were able to flush that audit out pretty thoroughly. While all the hands in the pot may seem like a lot, it actually became much clearer who would then become responsible for what once the audit was finished. That was achieved via a RACI chart.

I built one out for our team as we were discussing next steps in the redesign process, and everyone now has a clear direction of where they’re needed, or where they’ll simply be consulted. We are also transitioning into using Airtable, which can also be a really useful tool, especially when building out a RACI chart.

What an amazing find, Erin. As COVID-19 has changed the dynamics of processes and operations for a number of companies, this seems like a natural fit – home delivery. However, the fact that they could be using driverless technology seems amazing. Just as we recently discussed Amazon Fresh stores without cashiers, this seems to be an innovation and growth area for companies.

Awesome post Erin! This would be a game changer, especially for folks who may not be able to get to the pharmacy easily. I’m sure the demand for prescription delivery is very high. It is also great that Nuro is no extra charge! I assumed there would be some cost tied to a delivery service like this. After your post I was interested in learning more about Nuro and found that the delivery window is expected to be within the hour of calling in the prescription. That is incredible.
I agree with you, having Nuro available during this pandemic would have been extremely helpful. I was happy to read that Nuro has been utilized during these last few months to deliver to food and medical supplies at temporary field hospitals in California in response to the COVID-19. I’m excited to see what’s to come in the future with this technology!

Great post Erin! Generally when I have a prescription ready for pickup at CVS, it takes at least 2 or 3 reminder texts to get me to pick it up – life is busy and it is easy to forget! Having a service like this would be a game changer, especially since there is no extra cost associated with it. Self driving car and truck technology is very interesting to me, and I think we will begin to see a prevalence of this technology over the next 5-10 years. Reading your post reminded me of an article I read last year about a startup company in Arizona that had partnered with UPS and had quietly been using self driving tractor trailer to deliver bulk mail shipments between two cities 120 miles apart. I think it is pretty cool that they had been doing this drive with relatively low publicity until they were able to say “we have been using self driving technology for months to make deliveries and no one noticed because everything has been going fine”.

Autonomous semi-trucks have been driving along I-10 for months and no one noticed

Nuro is a great find and would make an excellent addition to the case! What would the current process flow diagram look like with the introduction of Nuro?