Sometimes it’s not easy to be a customer
I’ve worked for a long time in a business that prided itself in delivering quality products and service.
It wasn’t easy to do. It wasn’t easy because to actually do it you have to really work at it very hard. You don’t do it by saying that you will do it or want to do it. You do it by actions. By being vigilant and not becoming complacent just because you lived up to it yesterday.
My role was to look after the business process side of the business. That pretty much meant anything and everything that routinely, or as a special project went on in the place. I discovered early on that almost everything can be seen as a process.
I enjoyed it. It was a constant intellectual and practical challenge. Not only do you have to find the things that either need improving because they are presenting a problem, or simply because you know they can be better. You actually have to make it happen.
If I’m honest the discovery phase is probably the easiest. It’s like ideas. There is no end to them. Coming up with them, sorting them into good and bad, viable and not for the moment, may seem like a challenge, and actually it is. But not compared to actually making them live and breath and most importantly stick. I always found that to be the real challenge.
Throughout all of this time of trying to continually deliver quality, I found the most important thing was to always think about it from the outside in.
What is this like for the customer? What does the customer actually want and need? How is what we are doing measuring up? How can we make it better for them?
With these thoughts in mind it’s possible to bring about transformations, large and small that really do make a positive difference.
Now that I have moved on from this role, I am discovering more and more companies that have lost, or possibly never had a realistic understanding of how their products and services are actually letting down, driving away, annoying, and alienating their customers or potential customers.
My current experience seems to be automated telephone menu driven loops of despair, customer service staff who are very well trained and placatory but fundamentally unable to do anything, “you are important to us but as we are experiencing higher than usual demand you may want to call back”. Or, and this is my real blood boiling nightmare, “OK, that’s done for you, you should have it in the next five to seven days”. However, the allotted time arrives, I get nothing and am told again “Sorry about that. OK, that’s done for you, you should have it in the next five to seven days”. This is really happening and it isn’t from just one company.
If you are in charge of any of these types of operations, and by in charge I mean in a position to change the system not just pressurise the staff, think about what you are doing from the customer’s perspective.
Think about the system that is in place, the waste that is built in, the inefficiency and the immediate and future bad will you are creating. I don’t think this ill feeling and resentment goes away. I don’t think that it ever did. The difference is the age we now live in. The connected age of social media: the recommendation age.
Even if you are in a position where consumers have no choice so you don’t believe you have to care, I’m sure they will find a way to pay you back at some point.
Talk is cheap, we all know that now. What makes a difference is delivering. Admittedly it is the hard part, but if you don’t do it you are destroying trust. And without that you may not be creating a prosperous future.
