Worn Out by the American Political Rhetoric

This isn’t a post for Rs or Ds as I hear them often referred, it is an appeal to common sense.  I have listened and will continue to listen to the debates and speeches that will determine a winner or loser in November’s election.  Ahh, the American political process . . .

English: US political ideology trends 1992-2011 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Winner doesn’t mean improvement.

The next bright idea is just that – an idea.  Political ideology fills the air with more emotion than sense.  Scrap medicare, keep medicare, privatize or grow government all have been debated and spoken about by political pundits the world over.

Nothing has improved.

The ideologies to bring wealth and prosperity to the USA have failed us all.  There is a need to turn to a method based on evidence rather than conjecture and hope.  No political party has a complete success story.  The spin is more important than the evidence.

Where do we go from here?

We need for the folks in government that have method to improve it.  I have heard during this weeks speeches how NASA was a highly motivated entity in its pursuit of the moon.  It just didn’t end with NASA, the whole government was very focused on purpose.

We need this to happen now.

Further, we need method to improve based in knowledge and evidence, not pixie dust and wishes.  This would end the ideological divide that separates this nation.

Condi Rice is right in one sense, “No country, no, not even China can do more harm to us than we can do to ourselves . . .”

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Read his articles at Quality Digest and his column for CustomermanagementIQ.com.  Learn more about the The 95 Method for service organizations.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

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Myths, Legends and Finding Ways to Get Me off the Phone

My AT&T package (phone, internet, wireless and TV) has been under-performing for the past few months.  They replaced the modem which apparently they do quite often as the UPS store in my area indicated they got 6 – 10 a day through their store.  Solved part of my problem – phone works – but didn’t fix the frozen TV or the internet problems.

I was saved by a technician that came out and found several problems that when finished made everything clear and (so far) working very well.  That’s the way things go when you get a tech, things seem to work.  The troubleshooters on the phone will tell you tall tales when management uses AHT and other contact center measures that predictably drive wrong behavior.

One contact center call to AT&T for a problem with my remote was especially egregious.  I was told that the Sony TV I have had a known conflict.  The tech told me that this was not true and that he isn’t sure why I was given such misinformation.  He went on to share that the contact centers agents didn’t know how to troubleshoot and wished that management would actually see and understand the issues.

But why stop myths and legends when we can have BS?

More often than not, customers want something very simple . . . their problem solved.  Unfortunately, companies are too focused on saving money than resolving a customer’s problem.  The management paradox is that not solving my problem causes failure demand and adds to costs – as I have to keep calling back in to get my problem solved.

Sad, but true AT&T.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Read his articles at Quality Digest and his column for CustomermanagementIQ.com.  Learn more about the The 95 Method for service organizations.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

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Does Your System Make Workers Accountable?

I know what you are thinking . . . “my organization makes workers accountable with measures, performance reviews and inspection.”  Well, we aren’t talking the same lingo.

Rarely do you find measures in service organizations that matter to customers.  Usually the measures are all about reducing costs and meeting budget.  Let me tell you a secret . . . customers could care less about these measures.  And one counter-intuitive truth we have discovered is that measures that customers don’t care about lead to increased costs or a best a scorecard.  W. Edwards Deming referenced these lagging measures as useless to improving costs and service – “it is like driving a car looking out the rear view mirror.”  Customer measures lay out the road ahead.

Performance reviews make workers slaves to the system.  The game is to be compliant, not innovative.  It promotes a culture of brown-nosing and popularity contests, leaving most workers disenchanted.  They do make people accountable – to their boss.  The hierarchy is there to prevent accountability to customers, workers must bow to the next one up on the totem pole.

This thinking breeds inspection for compliance to measures that don’t matter to customers.  Most in inspection and compliance roles add little or no value from a customer perspective and too often creates animosity amongst workers.  Also, I find that workers are stuck in work designs that are sub-optimal and compliance means that we are perpetuating poor thinking and design.

So, what makes workers accountable?

Work that is challenging and designed to improve service is the short answer.  The long answer is that a worker that can see the impact to customer has a better chance of being accountable than a functionally separated one that your piece of work if blind to the one before or after.  This means that better designed work promotes accountability and it doesn’t require compliance.  Most workers willingly are accountable when they embrace a work design that makes them relevant and has ties to customer needs.

The bottom line is that accountability is attributable to the design and management of work.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Read his articles at Quality Digest and his column for CustomermanagementIQ.com.  Learn more about the The 95 Method for service organizations.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

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The Customer Strikes Back – Are You Ready?

I recently read an article by Doc Searls in the Wall Street Journal called, “The Customer as a God.”  Customers have long catered to service organizations by being treated in a  herd mentality – meaning the customer has to adjust to to the service organization.  However, the future holds a very different environment.

Doc Searls references it as Vendor Relationship Management. The Customer is King!

This is yet another strike to economy of scale thinking .  Mass marketing soon will give way to individual marketing and economies of flow.  This future means that service organizations will need to absorb great variety in customer demands.  Standardization will not only cost more through failure demand, but will now not give what customers crave services fit for them in a customized manner.

Wow!  Redesigning our thinking about the design and management of work is now more important than ever.  Not only does it cost less, but it delivers service in a truly personal manner.

Are you ready for the future?

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Read his articles at Quality Digest and his column for CustomermanagementIQ.com.  Learn more about the The 95 Method for service organizations.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

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Information Technology in a Functionally Separated World

It’s like a kick in the head . . . every time I walk into a service organization and have a look at their operations- by performing “check” – I am left with the same sense of disbelief as the previous service organization.  Front-line staff left with no hope of delivering service from entrapping technology.  No one considered the customer or felt any need to supply an IT “solution” that was cost effective end-to-end.

Blame can rest with both the service organization and the IT provider.  However, the service organization can change the game by actually designing services that focus their attention on the customer and what matters to them.  IT will be forced to follow when you provide systemic solutions.  The beauty of this is that it results in less IT spend and happier customers which translates to lower total costs.

Contrast this to the functionally separated organizations that must do process improvement and IT with cross-functionally groups.  Starting here puts service organizations behind by trying to coddle the silos of organizations.  This makes them slow to move and expensive.

Yet, we still have front offices and back offices, separated departments in organizations and the like.  The hope is that optimizing the pieces will result in improvement . . . it never does, no matter what kind of leader their is leading a silo.

Information technology will enable no organization until it comes to grips with the functional separation of work in service orgs.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Read his articles at Quality Digest and his column for CustomermanagementIQ.com.  Learn more about the The 95 Method for service organizations.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

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My Seven Wondrous Assumptions of a Industrialized Service Organization

I recently gave a speech at the CAST conference in San Jose.  I met many interesting professionals that are on the cutting edge of software testing.  These folks are rebels in their industry and stretch the bounds of “normal software testing.  Have a conversation with them and you will know what I mean.  It wasn’t the speech where I got to understand the thinking, it was the informal conversations and a continuation of questions after the speech.

Truly, anyone in an organization can have an impact in changing a system, most just don’t know how.  In fact, working with organization I find that most people know that their organization is doing things wrong, but lack the words to make change happen – at least, change that is improvement.

Studying organizations requires understanding some counter-intuitive thinking about the design and management of work.  In my speech, I described them as wondrous assumptions in our current thinking.  Listed, they are:

  1. Managers and Specialists Know Best
  2. Dividing the Work
  3. Beginning with Plan
  4. Focus on Budgets and Costs
  5. It’s Down to the Individual
  6. Copying
  7. Standardization

If you don’t understand the arguments, or better, know how to find evidence that challenges these assumptions . . . here is a good place for you to start.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Read his articles at Quality Digest and his column for CustomermanagementIQ.com.  Learn more about the The 95 Method for service organizations.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

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Complaint Line Con

You can find almost anything on the internet these days.  I found a piece by A Current Affair on Australian TV that talks about how hard it is to voice a complaint in today’s IVR infected and functionally separated  organizations.  The piece highlights how fast sales lines are picked up and how slowly complaint lines are handled . . . if at all.

You have to love an voice recognition system that does not recognize “complaint” as something that should be routed.  Of course, I believe that the world would be a better place without IVRs in general.  Its not old-fashioned to have a human answer the phone, it’s just good business.

It doesn’t surprise me that sales lines are answered so quickly and most other inquiries are slow to be answered or even resolved.  With many organizations – private or public – running failure demand upwards of 4 – 9 out of 10 calls means that these organizations are frustrating or even chasing away customers.

Imagine what it would be like in reduced costs to organizations if it could be designed out with different and better thinking . . .

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Read his articles at Quality Digest and his column for CustomermanagementIQ.com.  Learn more about the The 95 Method for service organizations.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

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