Our Operating Principles

Our guiding principle:  The ultimate expression of service is to value your customer’s time.

The eleven words above recognize time as your customer’s most valued commodity.  All of us have less of it than we want.  An agile enterprise is built to deliver everything that a customer wants and needs with a minimal investment of his or her time.  It does so by following the five steps that make up the foundations of agility:

• Identify – Recognize all opportunities to enhance the customer experience
• Design – Create an efficient workflow system that embraces speed and simplicity
• Plan – Follow a disciplined process to provide resource capacity that consistently matches accurately forecasted workload demand
• Optimize – Treat each interaction as an occasion to impress the customer with grace, efficiency and accuracy tailored to the individual need
• Evaluate – test, monitor, report and analyze results to constantly improve operations

How does an agile service enterprise differentiate itself from the more typical, clumsy operation that we often find ourselves dealing with?  Below are some examples that illustrate the difference:

Channel	The Agile Experience	The Typical Experience
Call Center	Simple menu, little to no wait for an agent, strong listening skills, and information delivered clearly and confidently	A confusing menu, long wait times, lots of hold time, and disappointment with the knowledge level of the staff
Wireless Phone Store	A salesperson that ensures you have all the accessories you need before leaving the store	Having to go back at some point in time for a travel charger, extra earpiece, etc.
Restaurant	Short, accurately estimated wait times and attentive service regardless of the time of day or day of week	Waiting for a table (though you can see many are available but not cleared), waiting an eternity for a check (while other patrons wait for your table)
“Big Box” Retailer	Lighting, signage, and layout designed to help you find what you need quickly, waits of no more than two minutes to check out	Lost time “hunting” for your items, then waiting in line to check out while a dozen cashier stations are unmanned
Department Store	Staff that understand how to “read” a prospective customer and offer assistance when appropriate	Wasted time and effort to locate an employee, only to discover he/she has little knowledge of store products and even less desire to assist you

For many operations, the move to agility ties together a variety of different projects and ideas into a cohesive strategy that supports long-term growth.  The change is substantial, and the payoff exceptional.