I was on the phone to my insurance provider to change my car insurance from one province to another. I was on hold for fifty minutes, waiting for an agent to get on the line. My wait was interspersed with reminders that I could complete numerous transactions through my online account—if, of course, I had one. I didn’t. To create one, I had to speak with an agent.
This fifty minutes I spent on hold is a service bottleneck. A bottleneck is an analogy for a part of a process that backs up, in which there are delays with the customer moving through the steps of a service, or with a product moving through the steps of production, just like the narrow part of a pop bottle. We can also use the analogy of a log jam—logs piling up on a river, because one log gets stuck on the rocks and nothing else can get by.
An analysis can uncover the reason(s) for a bottleneck. In this case there are many possibilities. Too few customer service agents for the number of phone customers? An unexpected surge in customers that is outside the normal volume? A flawed process for getting customers to open online accounts? A breakdown somewhere in other online processes?
Bottlenecks, or rather resolving bottlenecks, matter in education organizations. If we are a private education organization, and our learners are our customers, we do NOT want frustrated customers. We will lose them. Or they will not recommend us to other customers. If we are a public or private education organization, we need to be efficient and cost effective with our processes so that we can keep our administrative costs under control. And regardless of whether we are a public or private organization, our reputation with our learners matters, and bottlenecks affect our reputation.
The bottom line is that bottlenecks cost us. They cost us customers. They cost us time. And they cost us money.
Some of these examples of bottlenecks in education organizations probably sound familiar–unfortunately. An application form that is incomprehensible and impossible to complete. A requirement to submit the same documents multiple times. Applicants waiting months for a response to an application. Or waiting days for a response to an email. Customers not being able to reach a “live” person, leaving a voice mail and never hearing back from our organization. Potential learners wanting to put their names on a waiting list for a course that is full—and there is no waiting list. A process to request a transcript that is not working and the customer has no way to contact anyone to get help.
As education organizations, we have two bottleneck goals. One, have as few bottlenecks as possible. Two, break bottlenecks that arise as quickly as possible. The worst thing we can do is accept the bottlenecks. Thinking, “That is just how we do things”, “We have done it this way for years”, or “Our customers want to learn with us, so they will put up with our processes” won’t cut it any more in today’s competitive education landscape. Our customers have choices, and if we don’t resolve our bottlenecks, they will exercise their choices.
Break your bottlenecks. Don’t accept them as normal. And don’t expect your customers to keep coming back to experience them.
#processimprovement #breakbottlenecks