Planet Lean: The Official online magazine of the Lean Global Network
How we slashed waiting times for our customers

How we slashed waiting times for our customers

Zsolt Moczik
July 23, 2018

VIDEO INTERVIEW – A store manager explains how a simple kaizen reduced waiting times for customers who want to return products. We use today’s video to launch our Lean Improv contest.


Words: Zsolt Móczik, Deputy Store Manager, Praktiker Hungary


As a company, we want to make it easy for our customers to return products, should they wish to do so. So, when our transformation started, shortening the time it took them to return items quickly became a lean project at one of our stores in Budapest.

By observing the process, we realized that our Information Desk staff (those who in contact with customers returning products) wasn’t equipped to effectively and swiftly answer the query. They didn’t have the information they needed in order to make an informed decision on whether a product could be returned (if it’s been used, for instance, we don’t take it back), and as a resulted they used to rely on the salesperson from the area the product originally came from.

Not only did this mean a long wait for our customers, but also that our salespeople spent a staggering 51 days a year walking back and forth from their areas to the Information Desk, just to complete a process that other staff could have done… given the right information.

Take a look at this video to learn how we fixed the problem.


THE AUTHOR

Zsolt Móczik is the Deputy Store Manager of a Praktiker store in the outskirts of Budapest

Read more

The Nordstrom model to teach coaching skills to leaders
February 3, 2017
The Nordstrom model to teach coaching skills to leaders

INTERVIEW – We meet one of this year's Lean IT Summit speakers to hear about her team’s effective approach to turning Nordstrom’s IT leaders into coaches and truly supporting the firm's lean transformation.

Continue reading
Developing lean coaches to improve outcomes for students
October 2, 2017
Developing lean coaches to improve outcomes for students

INTERVIEW – Christleton Learning Trust in the UK is running several lean experiments across its three schools. We spoke with its CEO, who told us how coaching is supporting the transformation.

Continue reading
Lean Thinking: ingredients, incubation and diffusion
July 24, 2018
Lean Thinking: ingredients, incubation and diffusion

FEATURE – The author offers an overview of the ingredients that made lean thinking what it is, of the 30 years of incubation it underwent at Toyota, and of its diffusion from 1980 onwards.

Continue reading
Follow the gemba walk in a SNCF train maintenance center
November 7, 2016
Follow the gemba walk in a SNCF train maintenance center

NOTES FROM THE GEMBA - We follow the author on a visit to a train maintenance center in France. Through practical examples and pictures from the gemba, she explains how the center is transforming itself.

Continue reading

Read more

No items found.