If Jimi Hendrix visited the RMV...part 4

He might have asked, “Are you [customer] experienced?”, but then again, probably not.  One thing he would have most likely agreed with, though, is that nearly all of us have had a Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV) experience.

In this installment of, “If Jimi Hendrix Visited the RMV…", we continue to take a deep dive into Accelare’s seven step approach that transformed the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV) from a transactional based, “who’s next” operation into an end-to-end, services based Customer Experience (Cx) organization. 

In our last entry, “If Jimi Hendrix Visited the RMV… part 3", we explored step one, the customer focused conceptual model; this time we will explore step two, cataloging the services the RMV offers to its customers.

1. Create a ‘customer focused’ conceptual model of the organization.
2. Catalog the services the RMV offers to its customers, and the associated taxonomy that makes up the offering
3. Identify the RMV channels in which it delivers these services.
4. Document the standard Customer Journey’s through those channels.
5. Identify the interaction points, or Moments of Truth (MoT) with the customer within those Customer Journeys and assign MoT owners
6. Create a governance structure (Service Owners, Channel Owners) to ensure consistent development and delivery of the services
7. And finally, create a forum in which the full end-to-end Customer Journey can be vetted, designed, and stressed to provide an engineered, consistent and hopefully positive Customer Experience.

In Order to Provide Good Customer Service, You Need to Define What Services You Offer

Tangible goods organizations (e.g., manufacturing organizations) deliver products:  cars, electronics, white goods, etc.  Intangible goods organizations deliver services.  Asked what they sell, tangible goods organizations quickly offer up product catalogs… Service organizations on the other hand - especially highly intangible goods organizations such as higher education, healthcare, or municipal services - stumble to answer the same question.  More-often-than-not their catalog resembles a set of notionally defined standardized services with little thought to how those services relate to one another and even less how they leverage the organization’s core customer facing capabilities (see If Jimi Hendrix Visited the RMV…part 3). 

More to the point, a tangible goods organization’s catalog is supported by a well-defined taxonomy of inter-related manufacturing assembly drawings, sub-assemblies and bill-of-materials that leverage the concepts of mass production and economies of scale.  Service organizations, in contrast, are hard pressed to produce such documents of standardization; instead relying upon vaguely described responsibilities, mapped – most often through the org-chart – to departments that rely upon the Herculean efforts of its employees to do whatever they feel it takes to satisfy the customer (think of the sticky note reminders surrounding a call center agent’s computer screen, or the multiple computer screens, note pads and associated peripherals patched together at a driver licensing agent’s desk).  And as noted in, “If Jimi Hendrix Visited the RMV…part 3”, attempting to drive customer satisfaction through the inward facing org-chart is less than optimal.

Service Catalogs – the Rosetta Stone of Customer Experience

A Service Catalog is the first step toward implementing service delivery that leverages the very same concepts of mass production and economies of scale that have driven GDP growth in the Industrialized World over that last century.  Service catalogs identify not only what’s for sale, but also become the Rosetta Stone for the service organization, mapping the services to the Service Owners, the Capability Owners, the delivery channels, the personas, and myriad other items that form the customer focused organization (see Figure 4.0)

Figure 4.0 The Service Catalog Rosetta Stone

It All Starts With a Taxonomy

Tangible goods companies rely upon taxonomies, or product structure views, to offer up different lenses and perspectives into the organization (e.g., sales view, purchasing view, operations view).  The Service Catalog is the start of that effort, delineating what services are available for sale, with what options, through which channels and most importantly, via which designed customer journey. 

Figure 4.1 A Notional RMV Service Catalog by Category

At the very top of the Service Catalog are Service Categories (see Figure 4.1) with associated Service Owners; each with their own set services and associated responsibilities (see Figure 4.2).  It’s worth noting, that Service Owners may or may not have the responsibility to do everything necessary to define their services (that typically falls upon the functional owners listed within the Org-Chart), but are the accountable party for the service’s entire lifecycle.  In effect, the Service Owners are the stewards of their service(s), ensuring its form, fit and function meet the customer’s needs and service level expectations.

 Figure 4.2 The RMV Service Owner’s Responsibilities

Drilling down into the services within that category (see Figure 4.3) reveals the power of the Service Catalog and its Rosetta Stone characteristics, linking items like:

•  Service Name
• Version Number
• Service Description
• Capability Owners
• Market Segments
• Service Channel(s)
• Personas(s)
• Customer Journey(s)
• Moments of Truth (MOT)
• Service Level Expectations (SLE)

All within a versioned, single source of truth repository in a well-structured taxonomy.  In a sense, the Service Catalog is equivalent to a [tangible goods] organization’s Configuration Management approach - which is a systems engineering process for establishing and maintaining consistency of a product's performance, functional, and physical attributes with its requirements, design, and operational information throughout its life[1].

Figure 4.3 The Service Catalog by Service Owner

From the service category/owner’s level, the final layer within the taxonomy is a specific service (see Figure 4.4) which provides sightlines into each of the elements and variants of the service.  This level within the catalog can be thought of as its Bill-of-Materials (BoM),  which will be assembled and delivered (in real-time) through specific enterprise capabilities (people performing business processes supported by tools and technology) that will consistently delight the customer.

The service catalog lays the groundwork and connective tissue for the rest of our blog entries, starting with the concept of linking Service Owners with Channel Owners… our next blog entry.

Figure 4.4 The Fully Specified Services

Click below to read the entire case study from the RMV.

[1] "MIL-HDBK-61A, ""Military Handbook: Configuration Management Guidance". Department of Defense. 7 February 2001. Archived from the original on 20 March 2012. Retrieved 24 March 2012.