How to get a Reliable Service
Unlike a physical product, services are intangible and personal and can be delivered in many ways and styles. Whilst clients benefit from these different skills sets and talents, to turn them into happy clients, they also want the service to be reliable and consistent as if it were a product. In Part 3 of this blog series, Dom Moorhouse of Method Grid and Paul Wilson of Provelio identify how Method Grid enables service providers in the provision of reliable service levels to their clients.
When you get your car serviced the work is done by people and historically this could be a good or bad experience. Over time, the car industry captured the way it serviced your car, the costs involved and the time spent. This meant you would know in advance what was being done, how long it would take and what it would cost you before you commissioned the work. These service improvements eliminated uncertainty and the time and cost savings allowed the sector to further innovate and progress; you can, for example, now even receive a video of your garage mechanics working on your vehicle!
Method Grid is a unique solution – designed to capture the way you do things.
Your method is built from processes, checklists and templates that can then be followed in a clear, transparent manner. It is endlessly customisable and enables you to develop methods for specific clients, types of projects and sectors. It allows both customer and provider to commit to each other not only what will be delivered but how it will be delivered. In our experience at Provelio, we have found that clients like the certainty this creates and find that “standardising the repeatable” then frees up everyone’s time to engage with what is unique, complex or high risk. The aim is to focus the precious management time on what really matters and avoid time wasted in ambiguity, or conflict, with respect to what is repeatable, standard and straightforward.
At Provelio, we have found that all our services can be captured in Method Grid and this can then serve as the basis of our commercial engagement terms and remuneration. It moves us away from broad, vague descriptive activities to a sequence of deliverables being done at the right time and in the right order. This in turn provides transparency of where time is being spent, value is being created and how risk is being resolved. This detailed clarity then frees the team up to focus effort on innovative new ways of working such as how technology can be used to streamline processes yet further.
In business-to-business relationships, neither party can afford to be completely reliant on the individuals involved; it is too risky. Instead, you want to have great people working together in a structured way that allows them to focus their skills on the critical issues. This can only be done if you know that the basic repeatable and standard things are addressed. Method Grid will enable you to capture the way you work so that, in turn, you can deliver your services in a reliable and consistent fashion.