The story of Vasco: On the importance of the day and improving from a customer perspective
Business Improvement
Suppose you love football. You love to go to all your club's matches, and you cheer the loudest for your heroes. You are involved in the ups and downs of the club, and you love to see your favourite team win at least 3-0 every week. Much to your disappointment, it just isn’t happening. Worse still, your club doesn't seem to know what it means to win anymore. If you work for such a football club, you might be able to explain this. There is a lack of cooperation, there are too many expensive players with too little quality, there are too many vacancies. The explanation alone should not lead to acceptance. As a club manager you will have to give your fans what they have been yearning for. You can fly in help from Portugal, but more importantly you need to get the day-to-day operations in order. Not only that, but you have to strike a balance between getting the internal processes running smoothly and making structural improvements from a customer perspective. After all, the fans are the customers. The fans want to see the club win, but if it loses, at least it has to be with beautiful, inspiring football. Football from the heart, inspired by an organisation that has its house in order and exudes confidence.
Vasco helps companies and organisations – including those that have nothing to do with football – to get their affairs in order. With a focus on achieving smooth day-to-day operations on the one hand, and structurally improving processes from a customer perspective on the other.
Ruben Uppelschoten, CEO of Vasco Consult: "By getting a grip on your daily processes you quickly improve customer experience and employee engagement. This can be done relatively quickly - even if the problems are big - by discussing every day what is going wrong and what can be done better. From incident management you can start an analysis to make structural improvements. You can look at processes, your communications and policies, and above all, have the courage to redesign things from the customer’s perspective. Customer experience is high on the strategic agenda for many organisations. We see clients struggling with the question of how best to deal with it. Together, we look for a pragmatic approach that is consistent with proper process design. Being customer-oriented means listening carefully to the customer and adapting your own processes accordingly. Unfortunately, we see many companies trying too hard to imagine what it would be like in an ideal world. As a result, the gap between customer experience and operational excellence becomes unnecessarily large. Not just in thinking, but also in organisational structures, internal culture and prioritisation. Simplify, I always say. Focus on the importance of the day, start continuous improvement from there, with the customer at the centre. Then your processes will become more efficient and customer satisfaction will increase at the same time. And if your organisation is unfortunately a losing football club, it might become as good as mine, with 24 out of 8."
