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Customers are a Pain in the Back

15 April, 2011 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Service is all about flexibility and being able to accommodate your customer’s every whim.

Or is it?

If you go into a delicatessen you expect them to be able to give you a chicken piri piri brown baguette with extra pineapple, hold the mayo.

That is flexibility, that is great service.

But once you have ordered it, you don’t expect them to be able to take the chilli out of the piri piri. (I hope you would feel like a fool even asking).

That is being accommodating that causes rework, that is expensive, that is slow.

So why do we expect service providers to be able to accommodate us when we change our minds?

Just as importantly, why do they let us get away with it?

Good service is about flexibility, and then delivering like a train.  Look at Dell, or Amazon.

Bending over backwards for customers

If your customers change their mind mid order, smile politely, cancel the order and send them back to the end of the queue.

Image by Jessica Mullen

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: accountability, being too helpful, constraints, service design

About the Author

James Lawther
James Lawther

James Lawther is a middle-aged, middle manager.

To reach this highly elevated position he has worked in numerous industries, from supermarket retailing to tax collecting.  He has had several operational roles, including running the night shift in a frozen pea packing factory and carrying out operational research for a credit card company.

As you can see from his C.V. he has either a wealth of experience or is incapable of holding down a job.  If the latter is true this post isn’t worth a minute of your attention.

Unfortunately, the only way to find out is to read it and decide for yourself.

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