Front line service innovation

Front line workers are the ones who delivers real customer value in a service organization. Drive value creation and innovation through front line employees is the way to improved efficiency and new services. How do you efficiently innovate through the front line? After all they are not hired to be innovative, their task is to deliver service and support customers.

First of all you must define the questions you are trying to answer through front line innovation.

• Innovation of new services?
• Improving the efficiency of service delivery (deliver it the right way)?
• Improving the effectiveness of service delivery (deliver the right service)?
• Empowering the employee?
• Collaborating and involving the customer?

Front line service innovation leverages the direct customer experience, knowledge and quick round-trip time that enables experimentation. The trick is to empower, engage and motivate your front line people to take care of new ideas that comes flowing while working.

Kaiser Permanente, a Health care provider, has introduced a small team of special trained innovators called Innovation Consultants. These innovators can be design specialists, anthropologists or psychologists. They work according to a "human centered design"  principle where they involve the front line and their customers in improving efficiency and effectiveness at the same time as they innovate new services.

• Uncovering the untold story. Since most innovation and efficiency increase comes in the interface between the front line employee and the customer it is important to uncover the untold story. Things that get neglected because they have always been that way. Or you don't see them consciously where drawing a picture of how you feel when interacting in that situation will reveal you inner feelings. This leads to more sharply defined problems ready to be solved. 
• Packaging change. Every innovation results in some kind of change being executed. The innovation starts somewhere and then it all starts. How should it be replicated throughout the organization? How to measure its effectiveness? Applying the 5 Implementation principles enables an organization to quickly and successfully roll out a new service and still build upon employee engagement.

By working and empowering front line employees an organization can significantly increase both their innovation power as well as collaborating more closely with their customers. This leads to increased revenues through new services and rising profits through increased efficiency.

More to read on Kaiser Permanente's Front line innovation