Using a Check sheet

Customer Service: How to use a check sheet to identify opportunities to improve the customer experience

1. Set-Up

Include the entire team if possible. The first step will be a brainstorm session to gather all the types of complaints.

For 5 minutes, individually brainstorm using sticky notes to write all the customer problems that you are asked to help solve. Use one note for each problem.
After 5 minutes, each person will read their brainstorm notes and place on a wall.
Place repetitive notes under each other forming a column.
Have a couple of team members perform a quick review to ensure that each column has notes that are related.
In order to validate the top categories, give each person three to five votes. Have them place small checks near the problem columns they feel are the top. Identify the top 3 to 5 problems.

2. Prepare the Sheet

A template can be downloaded below

1. Identify the person that will be filling out the sheet

2. Enter the Start and End Date

3. Enter all the categories that you will be tracking from the brainstorm session.

3. Capture Data

For each occurrence place a tick mark (small "I"). In this example, the 5th check is a line going through the other four. This makes it easier and quicker to count the occurrences.

4. Calculate the Data

At the end of each week, calculate the data.

Calculate the data across each category row from Monday through Friday. This will show the amount of occurrences per category.
Calculate the data vertically for each day of the week. This will show the amount of issues that occurred during the week.
If you have additional people using the check sheet you can compile all the results on a separate sheet to show the entire department.

5. Visualize the Data

A run chart can be used to visualize the data for trends or patterns over a specific period of time. This can be created in excel or making a chart that the team fills in with a pencil. The run chart can be updated daily or weekly.

This chart should have a goal line. The goal line is sometimes only filled in after a few data points are collected. Also, the goal line should match the time periods of when you think improvements will get implemented. Therefore, most of the time they will not be straight horizontal or diagonal lines.

A pareto chart or bar chart are used to identify which category (Customer Service Issues) are the highest. The pareto chart shown on the right can be made in excel.

The pareto that is shown on the right is for the timeframe starting July 8 through September 16. There are 4046 issues that were filed in Customer Service.

If you follow the beginning of the orange line in the center of the order bar to the y-axis on the right. You will notice that Wrong order received is @ 40% of the overall population. This seems to be a good opportunity for the team to dive deeper and see what is going on.

You can also make a bar chart with paper, pencil or marker. This is a quick and easy way the chart can be updated without printing out the chart each time. It is a bar chart because it will just contain the bars and not the y-axis for percentage .

Checksheet

This is a very basic weekly check sheet template. The template is available for download

Download a Template