How do you get from an average 8 to 80 vaccinations an hour? Cut down on movement and eliminate queues. In the traditional model, clients go from registration, to a waiting area, to the place where they receive the shot and finally to where they recover for 15 minutes. In the new “hockey hub” model, the client is assigned a seat and stays in that one seat while all services come to them. Overall, there are fewer people moving, and fewer human steps. A ten-fold improvement in efficiency is simply amazing.
While the inventor of the hockey hub model is likely a genius, there is also a tried-and-true method to achieve the same improvements. It’s by systematically focusing on eliminating waste using the LEAN approach. Considering the 8 types of waste present in the old vaccination model, a LEAN practitioner would have identified wastes in the form of:
1. Waiting: People repeatedly queue-ing for the next step in the process
2. Motion: people having to move from one spot to another
3. Potentially over-processing if the same question is being asked repeatedly.
From Improving Efficiency to improving Customer Experience
While LEAN focuses on eliminating waste and increasing productivity, you need to balance that with improving customer experience (CX). When brainstorming how to innovate, a common technique is to ask, “How would another industry (that’s skilled in this area) do it?” So, if you want to boost CX, ask how the airline or hotel industry would do it.
In a vaccination hub in Malaysia, furloughed AirAsia Allstar stewards donned their uniforms and volunteered to welcome people with signature warmth and care, especially those who needed extra help e.g. people on wheelchairs. The service level provided was akin to luxury class airline travel. (Doubtless, there was some not-so-subtle marketing involved.) For those getting their second shots, the experience was vastly superior compared to when they got their first shot.
AirAsia is a budget travel airline. It is very, very LEAN in its operations; yet they know how to elevate customer experience. How would you raise CX by learning from the airline industry?