Kanban Innovation: How Process Transparency Can Improve Customer Satisfaction

How Small Businesses Can Implement a Customer Kanban

If you understand the benefit of kanban and want to leverage it in your company’s operations here are three simple ways to get started:

1. Create a customer experience roadmap 

The first step is to lay out every action that you want your customer to take, from getting them to buy your product or service, to using your offering effectively once they have purchased it. It is hard to implement a new system if you do not know the preferred actions of your customers.

2. Define customer needs at each step

Next, decide what is important to your customer during each step of the process. Should your prospective customer fill out a lead gen form, click a button, watch an introductory video or expect to receive a call from a sales representative?

My formula is to define a desired action, the subsequent action that follows, and so on and so forth. Your ultimate goal is to create systems that deliver information transparently.

3. Organize internal resources 

Lastly, organize the people and tools you need to effectively communicate with your customers. For many businesses an automated approach using email autoresponders may work well. Another approach can include a more personalized and high-touch experience — have an employee directly call customers to move them through the acquisition funnel.

Your goal is to communicate vital information with customers instead of letting it stay hidden behind the walls of your company.

Ultimately, setting up an effective customer kanban process does not take too much energy, but the long-term effects can be astonishing. The more you can ease a customers mind’s and reduce frustration, the more business you can potentially do.

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Photo: Dolce & Gabbana

Lawrence Watkins is the Founder of Great Black Speakers Bureau, a company that helps organizations find African American public speakers for the different events that they have. He is also the Co-Founder of Ujamaa Deals, a daily deal site that promotes black-owned businesses. Lawrence received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Louisville and MBA from Cornell University.