Business Insight Zone

All that paperwork you have to deal with?
It was created by people who were “just doing their jobs.”

You’re Creating Your Own Problems.

Some of the key problems in your business, including some that you — yes, YOU — create, arise from people “just doing their jobs.”

Think back over the past year, and consider your most frustrating encounters in doing business, or as a customer of a business. Some of them may have stemmed from incompetence or ill will, but I’ll bet more of them came from competent people who had nothing against you, but whose hands were tied:

• “Sorry, you don’t have the blue form BS-12. I can’t help you.”

The sad thing is, that lady was TOLD to tell you that. No BS-12, no can do. Period.

• “But what can I do about it?”
• “I don’t know. That’s not my job.”

Now that company (or agency, school, etc.) has an unhappy customer who can only say bad things about them. Which, when you think about it, is bad.

The Case of the Inert Roku Box

Contrast that to the experience my wife had last week — which was refreshing enough that I’ll call out the worthy company by name. My wife had ordered a Roku media player to use with our new HDTV. It was delivered overnight, all the right hardware was in the package, and the setup instructions were clear.

But for whatever reason, the player wouldn’t turn on. She unplugged everything and started over, re-read the instructions, et cetera. She called the support line, and the person who came on the line was helpful. He walked her through some of the same steps again, just to be sure. He told her the super-secret instructions for resetting the machine like a technician would. He was scratching his head, too.

Finally, they had an exchange about like this:

• He: “Well, we’ve tried all the usual things. Let me think of what else . . . “
• She: “At this point, could we just swap it for a new one? I’m afraid this one may be a dud.”
• He: “Of course — let me put that order in now. We’ll overnight the new to you, and include a return tag so you can ship the old one back to us for free.”

Boom.

Somewhere, somebody got the idea that it makes sense to please the customer, and to make it the job of that phone-support guy to please the customer. Ergo, no accusations that my wife had broken the device, no “five to ten business days for delivery,” no extra charge for replacement, nothing.

No grief masquerading as “just doing my job,” in other words. All because somebody freed up that phone-support guy to satisfy customers.

Guess how happy we are with Roku now? (The new box they sent us, by the way, is one of the best, simplest, most awesome pieces of consumer electronics I’ve ever used.)

Now, back to YOUR business.

If you’re a manager and you’re human, you’ve likely propagated or perpetuated some asinine rule that makes it harder for your customers or your colleagues to do business.

If you’re a front-line worker, you’ve probably shaken your head but gone ahead and carried out such a rule, without even pushing back very hard about it.

How can I be so sure? Because I see it everywhere I go. Because I hear it from contacts across many industries. Because it’s a constant source of complaint in my Twitter stream.

So don’t take it personally, but please DO acknowledge that you’re probably — somewhere, some which way — committing the sin of “just doing my job,” either by comission or omission. Assume the problem exists, and start looking for it; you may be sobered by how quickly you find it.

Then, take steps to make sure that no one your company serves — customer, employee, vendor, whatever — ever has reason to grind their teeth when they hear you say “just doing my job.”

~

Image by Isaac Bowen, used under a CC-Share Alike license.

Category: Consumer goods, Management