Steve – thanks for raising this subject. Like you I have suffered at the hands of organisational complaints procedures – I am currently locking horns with my ISP and gave up with my father’s bank, where I am the appointed attorney.

I am not sure that I would use the word ‘system’ to describe the arrangements that companies have established to process customer complaints. If we look at the whole issue systemically, the problem stems from the initial failure of the organisation to provide its product or service to the standard that customers reasonably expect. Ideally, the outputs of their systems deliver what you and I want, with minimum variation. It’s not exciting, but the customer gets what they require each and every time. How many times do we have a good experience of a product or service yet, when we go back again, it’s not the same?

I fear that people who work in the complaints departments often have a thankless task. They do not have a clear understanding of the system of work that led to the initial failure of product or service. They do not know what caused the system to fail when we needed it to succeed. Crucially, they do not understand the difference between variation that is built into the system itself and variation that is due to a unique event. This inability leads to wrong ‘corrective’ action being taken.

And yet it is not the employees in the complaints department who I would really want to challenge. Their management are responsible for the systems in which those employees work; the same systems that deliver, or fail to deliver, to the customer. Those managers set up functional silos that can destroy any understanding of the real flow of work, they seek to achieve outputs that are within target or specification rather than engage in continuous improvement, they fail to understand the variability of work when solving problems and they benefit from remuneration systems that support this whole regime.

Where is the source of intrinsic motivation for the employee in the complaints department when faced with these odds?

In February 2008, Linda Holbeche CIPD’s Head of Policy and Research wrote “leaders who can develop flexible structures and roles with line of sight to the customer … create a shared sense of direction in the face of ambiguity”. Until leaders grasp this essential truth and know how to engage in continuous improvement of their systems to achieve excellent service delivery, we will make little progress.

Glyn Lumley
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Steve;
In my and others’ experience, the contrast between GREAT and POOR service is stark: I phone one number and get straight through to a person VERSUS I go through multiple telephone options none of which are relevant to my problem and then wait for ages listening to ‘musak’ and an apologetic voice telling me my call is important to them but I’m paying the cost of the call; the person spends time genuinely listening to and understanding my problem VERSUS the person is trying to get my call closed within their targeted 2.5 minutes; the person solves my problem in one call VERSUS the person transfers me or asks me to call another number only to go through the same tedious process; the organisation quietly gets on with solving problems and improving their service VERSUS the company displays on billboards nationally that they are 1st for customer service and yet whilst they responded to my email within their standard 2 days they actually took 12 emails from 12 different people and 10 days to give me an answer that made true sense.

That is the contrast, but before we blame the people, remember what W Edwards Deming et al said, “When you put good people into a c**p system, the system always wins” (my words not his!).

Who designed the system? Leaders and managers. Who needs to learn new way of thinking about management and the way work works? Leaders and managers? Who are ideally placed to assist leaders and managers to change thinking? HR. What are HR currently doing? Bleating about not being at the boardroom table and doing the wrong things. I say the latter with some personal humility since prior to seeing the light about Systems Thinking, I was that HR person!

It is time HR woke up to this new opportunity to do the right thing for customers, for the organisation and the employees – many organisations are already doing this but unfortunately not led by HR.

Andy Lippok
A Systems Thinker
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Thanks to both of you for your comments. I'm going to blog again on this subject, focussing on the positive next time - how organisations that see customer contact as an opportunity to learn and eliminate problems steal a march on their competitors. Your comments on the upstream product standards and systemic issues have given me loads to think about.
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