Double Checks Save Customer Satisfaction

Checklists are easy to use and the most effective tool that we humans have ever invented for making complex things easier and making work scalable.  

When most people think of checklists they primarily think of Pre-Checklists because they are the most common form of checklists.

The reality is, that there are different types of checklists and they are designed to be used at different points within a process. Pre-Checklists are designed to guide end users through multiple tasks that all need to get done for the organization to perform at its maximum level. Whereas Post-Checklists are designed to double check what a team member just did, to make sure we didn’t miss anything important that could affect safety, sales, or customer satisfaction.

Pre-Checklists have the following attributes:

  • They are more detail focused
  • They get completed at the beginning or before a process
  • They are meant to prepare the team to do or check something
  • They are better for complex processes with more than 5 steps or tasks. 
  • They help with set-up or getting ready, they are meant to be done before we start.
  • Examples:
    • Opening Checklists
    • Line Checks
    • Operations Checklists
    • Safety Checklists
    • Pilot Pre-flight Checklists
    • Safe Surgery Checklist

Post-Checklists have the following attributes:

  • They are more summary focused – A double check of critical items
  • They should be shorter and focused on the big picture.
  • They get completed at the end of a process
    • Having a pre-checklist would slow down the end user doing their job.
  • They are made for high volume repeatable processes, where an employee does the process repeatedly.  
  • In high volume processes, repetition becomes the enemy, because you do it so often that you can’t remember what it is you have done on any one instance of the process. 
    • Did I do that?
  • Examples: 
    • Housekeeper room cleanliness confirmation
    • Order Confirmation Check
    • Quick Lube Auto Safety Check
    • Set-up Confirmation
    • Line Checks

Post-Checklists provide a valuable tool for businesses to ensure that they haven’t missed anything that could affect sales, speed of service, and most importantly customer satisfaction. They are also less time consuming and allow team members to work the process the way the prefer, increasing job satisfaction and lowering the big brother factor, while simultaneously ensuring that quality is maintained.

Most companies should look at their daily operations and the processes and know that they can utilize different types of checklists to guide their teams, Pre-Checklists to help them get ready for sales periods and Post-Checklists to confirm that they didn’t miss anything. 

If you would like to learn more about the different kinds of checklists and how you can optimize them in the OpsAnalitica Platform, please click here to schedule a demo.

Tommy Yionoulis

I've been in the restaurant industry for most of my adult life. I have a BSBA from University of Denver Hotel Restaurant school and an MBA from the same. When I wasn't working in restaurants I was either doing stand-up comedy, for 10 years, or large enterprise software consulting. I'm currently the Managing Director of OpsAnalitica and our Inspector platform was originally conceived when I worked for one of the largest sandwich franchisors in the country. You can reach out to me through LinkedIn.

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