A waste of a day....

Aaaarrrrrggggghhhhh! 
I've had an absolute pig of a day trying to get through to various companies via their call centres without any success - all of which are based here in the UK, before you go waggling the finger at oversees outsourcing as being the root of all evil in customer service. One in particular I feel especially aggrieved at, so much so that I've started drafting an Official Complaint. I thought I would share the main points from it, along with my attempts at constructively suggesting possible improvements, for you all to snigger at or sympathise with. I haven't sent it yet. I may have a different (more toned down!) view in the morning. But this is what I really mean...

1. An automated telephone routing service with far too many options: I fell asleep half way through its announcements! It also seems to route you through in loops – particularly if you end up somewhere where you thought you needed to go given the options, then spoke to someone who said you needed to be somewhere else, so back through the system you go again – why can't you just put your customer straight through to the person who can resolve their query!

2. Keeping your customers on hold for fifteen minutes is unacceptable. Have a call back service to leave a message – and use it! And don’t keep repeating that we can contact you via email because after the first eight times of hearing it I’ve got the address, I’ve emailed whilst I’ve been waiting on the phone and that hasn’t got me a reply any quicker. I need an answer NOW! (That's why I've called, rather than written....)

3. Answering a customer’s stroppy email insisting upon a call-back that very same day with one phone call, followed up by an email does not correspond to dealing with a customer query. Sure, it’s “answering” it, and that’s great if all the customer wants is to know that somebody does actually work at "Company X". But if you need to garner more information before you can help the customer (which you did because I deliberately did not give too many details away because I wanted to speak to a real person) then you need to actually have that two way real-time dialogue with them. Not leaving your number for them to call back doesn’t exactly help if they're then expected to call you back. Even worse when they call the number back you dialled from, it’s not a direct line and it goes back around the houses of the automatic routing system (see point 1). So I emailed back, got no response, gave up, fumed for a bit, then decided to write this letter (well, blog for now) when I’d calmed down to see if this would spark some constructive communication?

4. What is it with the nationwide - perhaps global - culture of covering your back to avoid blame? (I'll just cc him/her in just in case) Does your manager really need to be cc’ed in to an email so they know that you have simply called someone – even if you’ve not actually dealt with their query properly? Is that a good thing to show your manager….. really? Or would they prefer to learn that you’ve done your job by resolving the issue before it became a complaint and everybody is happy? Today all I wanted was to speak to someone to get to the bottom of my query – I didn’t care if it was phone, email or even pigeon that got me the response, I just wanted information. Instead, I got nothing. Except you probably met your targets for response, and alerted every man and his dog to an impending complaint. Great. But that wouldn’t give me job satisfaction.

I could go on - but I'm wasting my evening now thinking about it. I think it's best to leave the letter for now, have another beer and resume complaint in the morning. I might have my less sarcastic head on tomorrow..... (will they take me less/more seriously then?)

Washing the dog

I've given some thought this morning to how to change the culture of an organisation with efficacy. Now, you could come up with all sorts of analogies but I'm going to use one I'm pretty familiar with - that of washing a dog. This assumes that a need for change has been identified and agreed. It attempts to take account of how resistance to change can be managed - because it does - even when it's the people themselves coming up with the changes, because not everybody will agree in the early days.

Firstly, you wouldn't approach washing a dog part by part, getting each bit wet, shampooed, rinsed and dried before moving on to the next part- you would wash the dog as a whole, applying each stage to the dog all over before commencing the next part of the task.

But too often we hear senior managers saying "you need to start with the frontline" - those delivering the service or making the product. So we train these guys in lean systems thinking. I liken this to dipping the tail in the bath. The tail gets wet but it doesn't wash the dog. At the other end we hear people on the ground saying "but we need senior managers to understand and support us". So we spend some time training them, which is like washing the head. Again, this bit gets wet too but it's not washing the whole dog. (And anybody who has ever tried to wash a dog knows they especially hate getting their heads wet!)

So to wash the dog we have to submerge its entire body in water so all of it gets wet at the same time. Whilst some dogs love this (mine has a penchant for lakes.....) - just as some companies love to shake things up and be very innovative - the majority HATE getting wet. A wash is imposed on them. They like their current smell, even if you think it stinks. They don't mind the odd bit of dried dirt caked around their elbows and hocks. It's a souvenir from their latest adventures.

So to wash the dog we have to coax them into the bath or other washing area. We have to hold them gently but firmly, steering them where they need to stand. We have to make sure the temperature is not too hot, nor too cold, but just right. We have to shower them slowly so they become wet all over evenly. We have to massage shampoo into their coats and give them lots if reassurance to comfort them, and praise when they have done good.

In the same way, to implement a lean transformation we must apply it to all levels of the organisation simultaneously so one bit doesn't dry out/lose interest before the whole is complete. Change has to happen at the right pace, evenly. Those facilitating the change must be clear, firm, encouraging and reassuring.

Hopefully by the end of the exercise you will have one clean dog (but possibly also a very wet bathroom!)