Manage your human sigma

If sales and service organizations are to improve, they must learn to measure and manage the quality of the employee-customer encounter. Quality improvement methodologies such as Six Sigma are extremely useful in manufacturing contexts, but they're less useful when it comes to human interactions. To address this problem, the authors have developed a quality improvement approach they refer to as Human Sigma. It weaves together a consistent method for assessing the employee-customer encounter and a disciplined process for managing and improving it. There are several core principles for measuring and managing the employee-customer encounter: It's important not to think like an economist or an engineer when assessing interactions because emotions inform both sides' judgments and behavior. The employee-customer encounter must be measured and managed locally, because there are enormous variations in quality at the work-group and individual levels. And to improve the quality of the employee-customer interaction, organizations must conduct both short-term, transactional interventions and long-term, transformational ones. Employee engagement and customer engagement are intimately connected--and, taken together, they have an outsized effect on financial performance. They therefore need to be managed holistically. That is, the responsibility for measuring and monitoring the health of employee-customer relationships must reside within a single organizational structure, with an executive champion who has the authority to initiate and manage change. Nevertheless, the local manager remains the single most important factor in local group performance. A local manager whose work group shows suboptimal performance should be encouraged to conduct interventions, such as targeted training, performance reviews, action learning, and individual coaching.     

削债优先

尽管官方数字表明此次经济危机在2009年三季度基本得到缓和,但在高失业率的影响下,美国经济复苏表现十分疲软。美国实体经济预计在未来两年增长2．5％．但远远无法与中国8％到9％的经济增长率相比。     

Will your Medicare claims stand up?

In the first two installments of our series, we gave you the details of reimbursement under the new Medicare fee schedule, and showed how to code evaluation-and-management services with the revised CPT system.* This issue, we'll tell what to expect from Medicare carriers as they teach and enforce the new payment rules.     

低收入国家的农村金融市场:最近的争论和教训

贷款的拖欠及呆帐已经干扰了低收入国家的农业信贷计划,尤其是农业发展银行。不难发现,拖欠贷款,甚至在再贷款之后,占未偿清贷款的30％以上。会计报表可能将贷款问题掩盖起来,而这些问题往往要比资金报告里所提到的问题严重得多。大量文献论述了低收入国家拖欠贷款问题,尤其关于农业信贷和公共部门的发展银行。文献里的传统观点是,借款人拖欠贷款有两种原因:他们没能力偿还贷款,或者他们不愿偿还贷款。不能偿还贷款的原因可能是收入不足,收入不足可以解释为偶然事件造成的,如坏天气、虫灾、价格突然下跌,或者由于结构上的缺陷,如不适当市场、基础设施或技术等。不愿偿还贷款的主要原因是:贷款被视为福利补贴或政治资助。或者更简单些,借款人从借款时就不打算还款,因此将贷款转入消费支出。     

竞争新现实：共同创造价值

社会正在悄悄地发生着深刻的变革。工业体系生产了越来越多的产品与服务，数量比历史上任何时刻都要多，这些产品与服务正通过不断增加的渠道交付到消费者手中。大型超级市场、专卖店和网上零售以及折扣店的数量激增并得到了突飞猛进的发展，提供了数以干计的产品和服务。这种产品的多样性对消费者产生了势不可挡的影响。我是否购买了理想的数码照相机？我的慢性溃疡病是否得到了最好的治疗？我是否同意接受了最适合我的服务？同时，由于手机、网站和媒体渠道的普及与发展，消费者获得越来越多的信息也成为可能，而且是以前所未有的高速度和高成本来获取的。但问题是：谁能够拥有足够的闲暇时间和熟练程度，来挑选并评价所有产品和服务呢？日益增大的产品和服务的复杂性、相关的风险与回报，使得那些把时间视作稀缺资源的消费者困惑不已。也就是说，产品多样性未必能导致更好的消费者体验。     

钻削工艺的发展趋势——深度、快速、干燥钻孔

钻孔是最基本的金属加工工艺之一,而且孔加工也是一个厂家可大幅增加机床工具投资回报的领域。众所周知,孔加工要耗费整个加工时间的50％～70％,因此,在孔加工方面,即使仅是一个小的工艺改进,也能够增加产量,降低生产成本。以下这三项代表新趋势的孔加工技术也许能最     

八十年代初发展中国家的货币金融状况

发展中国家石油进口国的货币金融状况和国际收支平衡情况于八十年代初继续恶化.1981年的日常业务(不包括官方的国际拨款)赤字达880亿美元,而1979年为440亿美元.据国际复兴开发银行估算,1982年的赤字为820亿美元.世界石油价格的第二次猛涨,使较"富裕"的石油输出国(伊拉克、卡塔尔、科威特、利比亚、