Writing a blog about innovation is an activity that I have come to really enjoy; it’s like thinking out loud. Authoring the BrainBank blog also has a fringe benefit, in that every now and again, I use this soapbox to grind an axe about something that really annoys me – in this installment of such an occasion, the target of my ire is the organization that never has enough time to do it right the first time, but always seems to have the time to do it again (and increasingly, looking to charge for the negative experience all over again!!).
Now I am certain that many of you have fallen victim to this nuisance yourself; the problem is, unless I am mad and/or am the only one to discern this particular pattern, that do-it-over-ism is reaching pandemic proportions. It seems that the majority of service purveyors today are better-versed in excuse-giving than in delivering on a promise. When was the last time your can remember having your car serviced without the need for some type of a follow-up? Or a store delivery where they got the item right and/or was delivered and on time? Or the carpet batch colors being identical even after the carpet-layers had finished their installation? Take whatever example that fits a recent personal experience – the point I am making is that speed has started to trump quality in the deliverables equation; and therein lies a simple yet powerful innovation: get back to basics – the core reason why customers choose your brand and presumably the competitive advantage that built your franchise in the first place.
The corporate response to this slow slide into mediocrity has been the venerable Customer Support, Customer Care or other nomenclatures that are euphemisms to what is really a Complaint Department; many of which today are handled by way of call centers. Getting through the endless telephone navigation options is a pain – in many instances, one should receive a medal just for tracking down a human to interface with. And even when you happen to get the right person on the phone, their eagerness to flush you is downright palpable; and for good reason, when one considers that a key metric for in-bound call centers is the brevity of engagement and the speed with which a complaint can be processed. Now there’s an enlightened way to connect with your rainmakers!! Why not just shoot them!
Complaints, if handled properly, are a fantastic source of ideas – if we distill a complaint down to its most basic form, one could look at it as a problem statement. A problem statement is often the focus of Idea Challenges at the heart of many an Innovation Management initiative; and almost always the source of a new product or service idea.
How this narrative has become stooped in negativity is a mystery to me – after all, someone is making the effort to tell you how to improve your product/service so they can buy more of it. Am I missing a point or just grinding my axe?