Reinventing Operations

Abstract

As a rule, 90 percent of a company’s workforce will be employed in operations. Operations are therefore key to service delivery. The cultural institutions we have analyzed so far illustrate this fact. Julian Bird, Chief Operating Officer of Tate, is in charge of running all of Tate’s operations, which means that the day-to-day organization is his responsibility. Customers come to Tate⁵⁴ for the artistic program, but their satisfaction depends largely on the service delivered by the institution’s operations. Their expectations may be disappointed; in other words, their satisfaction may be affected by circumstances such as having had to wait in line for ages, having had to jostle to see the paintings, having received poor service at the cafeteria, or not having obtained a satisfactory response from customer service. Such ‘moments of truth,’ where customers come into immediate contact with the company’s operations, have a decisive impact on customer experience.