Does a Company Need Customer Service?
You’ve heard me preach time and again about the need for customer service. Take a moment to read this interesting take from Gerry McGovern’s blog. You can link to his site at the bottom of this page. To me, if we aren’t careful, it seems like it would be really easy to have a chicken-egg situation.
IS THE ORGANIZATION THE ENEMY OF THE CUSTOMER?
What is good for the organization and what is good for the
customer are not always the same thing.
Organizations are used to saying to customers: “Here’s what we
have. If you like it, you’re going to have to adapt to how we do
business.” But on the Web, the customer has much more control.
The customer is saying to the organization: “Here’s what I want.
If you have it, great, but adapt to me.”
The organization needs the customer. The customer needs the
organization. So, shouldn’t that lead to a perfect marriage? No.
What’s at play is complexity and change. Most people and most
organizations are inherently conservative. We resist complexity
and change.
This world is a swirl of ever-increasing complexity and change.
So, the questions become: Who changes? Who takes on the
complexity?
I was with an organization recently that will not accept email
enquiries from the public. It is a long-established organization
and it simply has not been able (or willing) to initiate the
internal changes required to allow email enquires.
It can deal with customers coming into its offices. It can deal
with customers ringing up. It can deal with customers sending in
letters. But it can’t (won’t) deal with its customers sending in
emails.
It is cheaper and often more efficient to deal with an enquiry
or support question by email (not to mention by online chat). So
why doesn’t the organization do this? Because this is a large
organization and changing to a situation where email enquiries
can be received will cause it a lot of hassle and complexity.
Intranets are notorious places for organizational complexity,
departmental chest-thumping, and vanity publishing. Without
proper management, they become a peacock’s paradise and an
acronym and jargon jamboree. It would seem that internally, the
department and the division is the enemy of the organization.
It’s a complex world. And there is a choice. Will the
organization take on this complexity so as to make things
simpler for the customer? Or will the customer take on the
complexity thus making life easier for the organization?
In a rigid authoritarian society, customers and citizens have no
choice. They have to fill out long forms, stand in line, adhere
to archaic rules, and bow to inflexible bureaucracy.
But in a modern and open society, the shoe of complexity is on
the other foot. It is the organization that must bend and be
flexible. It is the organization that must wear out leather as
it rushes around trying to simplify the world for the
customer.
This need for flexibility is equally necessary within the
organization. Staff are no longer thankful for jobs for life,
because there are no jobs for life. They are no longer as
willing to learn and adapt to badly designed internal
processes.
The old organization must give way to a new, much more flexible
model. The organization can no longer easily say: adapt to us.
Organization is not an end in itself. The end is to achieve an
objective. What is the objective? Serve the customer. In a
complex world, serving means making simple.
Here’s the link to read more:
http://giraffeforum.com/wordpress/2008/02/03/is-the-organization-the-enemy-of-the-customer/#respond
