We’ve all experienced dysfunctional organizations as unfortunate customers, but what, if anything, do we learn from the experience beyond confirmation that it’s time to hit the road and go elsewhere? Is the problem really employee incompetence? Is it a lack of concern for the customer? Or is there more to the problem than meets the eye?
Consider the recent experience our office had with a web hosting provider. It was so disturbing that our webmaster called us in frustration to say he was washing his hands of the matter, and it caused me to write this article in place of the one I intended to submit.
Due to long-standing dissatisfaction with our web hosting provider we made the decision to move to one with a stronger reputation for service and reliability. In the process of making the change, our existing provider terminated service several weeks prematurely causing our web site and email service to be down for nearly a week.
Repeated phone calls beginning on the day of the error were painfully unproductive. Telephone calls to support personnel landed in two different countries where no call could be transferred beyond the second tier of support. Four days and umpteen calls later with no success made us feel like we were in a Capital One commercial where every response from the support staff is “No!” What was in our wallets had the sensation of a railroad spike.
Eventually, our calls reached a location closer to home. First, pleas for help were met with similar “there’s nothing we can do” statements and accusations of customer error. After we presented a plethora of potential solutions—all rejected—the customer service staffer suggested that a signed request for reinstatement would resolve the problem within a single business day. “Wow! A breakthrough!” we thought. But twenty-four hours later nothing was fixed and a follow up call was met with, “We can’t do that, the data has been erased from the system.”
Our desperate attempts to reach a supervisor provided us with the explanation that had a call been made within the first two days, they could have easily corrected the problem, but now it was too late. We seemed to be caught in some sort of Twilight Zone rerun. Not surprisingly, rehashing the previous dozen or so calls that occurred the first four days seemed to fall on deaf ears, and the supervisor refused to provide contact information for anyone further up the chain insisting that the general manager would not accept a call from a customer.
Miraculously, further efforts to resolve the problem did result in reaching a peer supervisor who acknowledged that the data was, in fact, still available. He was quick to let go of who was to blame and was extremely cooperative and competent in getting us what we needed to get the site and email systems functioning. He also informed us that the new general manager would be very interested in knowing about our experience because he is committed to improving customer service.
So what do we learn from this aside from the limits of our patience and sanity?
Consider that core employees and supervisors in this business were unwilling, or unable, to address the problem; their jobs were to merely regurgitate scripted responses. Offsite operations refused to escalate the problem beyond their offices and supervisors were afraid to let us speak to managers.
Although the individual who solved the problem had technical expertise he had acquired from a previous role in the company, most of what he did any employee could have done. Instead, most chose to absolve themselves of responsibility. Why?
Because they work in an environment where management has attempted to automate the people responsible for customer service through misguided measurements, tightly controlled responses, and punishment for non-conformance. Consequently, employees worry more about how many calls they process and how quickly they can crank through them instead of trying to satisfy customers and solve problems. In order to ensure consistency, employees are provided canned responses and scripts they are expected to repeat with no thought as to the impact on the customer or the business.
Are core workers part of the problem here? Of course, but only insofar as they have failed to challenge the system that created such a workplace. Despite the obvious failures of core staff in this business, the only real solution is to attack the environment that created the dysfunctional workplace. More empathy training is not the answer. More leadership decrees supporting a focus on the customer will not help. Substantive change cannot occur until the systems and practices that created the problem are eliminated and replaced with purposeful leadership and policies that de-automate the workforce. And that responsibility rests squarely on leaders.
Trying it on for fit: Try conducting after-action reviews to ascertain the level of employee automation occurring in your organization. In other words, when reviewing customer service challenges, production problems, project failures or other situations, assess each act or step asking why the choice was made. Look to see how often employees take personal responsibility for final outcomes, pay attention to business success and customer satisfaction, and make decisions using principles. Also note how often their responses deflect accountability to supervisors, rely on measures of activity to determine effectiveness, and cite policies and management expectations as the bases for their decisions. The results should give you an idea of whether employees are applying their expertise with purpose or if they are mostly responding automatically according to dictates without regard for business outcomes.
Follow up by asking what employees need from you and the rest of the organization to act with greater responsibility for outcomes and less dependence on automatic responses.
