The Paradox of Complexity & Alignment

With the increasing new technologies and associated complexities, the specializations in technology areas are getting deeper day by day. From the days of IBM mainframe one stop solution, the computer industry has been sliced into specialized domains with each companies focusing on specialized products and services like ERP, cloud computing, mobility, global connectivity, social media etc. The internet computing has enabled business with anytime-anywhere computing and helped business in drastically reducing the cost, transaction cycle times, speed of delivery.  Almost all the industry segments like banking, manufacturing, retail, travel, transport, telecom etc adopted Internet technologies to deliver business benefits to end customers.

On one hand the Rapid rate of technology changes have pushed organizations in this catch up game of specialization; on the other side Customer needs are changing -expecting personal attention, demanding more with less, faster & cheaper with better quality products and services.   

Whether we look at technology domains or the functional domains like retail, manufacturing etc., each of them are changing at a fast pace, the business models are changing, use of technology is increasing, customer expectations are getting more personal. Each of these domains needs specialization with deeper knowledge to manage in their respective functional areas. It is becoming more and more difficult for large organizations to maintain balance between functional expertise and business expertise. As business grows and specializations increase, more and more organizations have quickly adopted quality systems to standardize and streamline the operations. Standardization and Specialization worked perfectly in the era of mass customization, but in today’s internet age customers expect individual care and attention. In addition to rapid changes in technology and business models, the customer expectations have become more personal and individual experience based.

As we saw in the  case of Platinum customer, too much specialization and standardization make the customer irrelevant. Customer needs are either looked through the lens of specialized functional silos or through the standard processes and systems. With more and more standardization and specialization, customer service management becomes mechanical with no human touch. In earlier sections we studied the influence of command & control model which has put us on autopilot of winning and control. The silo mentality forces us to think vertically with no interest in the broader aspects and the big picture, similarly we are fixated on the events and transactions due to process centric mentality. 

In addition to the command & control model, the other reinforcing influence on our mental models or the theory in use is the education and teaching that has been imparted on us right from the childhood. The Teacher centric education has molded us to be good at accumulating knowledge in our memory banks that can be remembered and recalled anytime, great followers of instructions (no questions, please!),  and to be competitive to win the sprint, not the marathons. We are trained to work on the known territory of plane, hard ground but we fail miserably when we encounter swampy, low land which is an unknown territory. Even as we join our professions, we are trained very well to work on assembly line situations with standard input & output passing through well defined processes. The customer executives falter when customer’s query falls outside the script, we may blame them but that’s how service professionals are trained, to strictly follow the instructions and no questions. Our trainings focus more on what and not so much on how, they teach us about fishes but not so much on fishing.

Zappos, a company known for its innovation and service excellence, encourages it’s employees to be adventurous, creative and open minded. At Zappos, they don’t measure call times, the average handle time which focuses on how many calls each rep can take in a day. They think performance metrics like this can translate into reps worrying about how quickly they can get a customer out of the phone. The customer executives are not given any scripts, because they trust their employees to use their best judgment when dealing with each and every customer. The customer executives are given the freedom to let their true personalities shine during each interaction and to emotionally connect with the customers. When customer calls looking for specific styles of shoes that is out of stock, in those instances every rep is trained to research at least 3 competitor web sites and direct the customer to the competitor like the vegetable vendor.

Zappos is a classic example where they have achieved highest in service excellence by enabling every customer executives to be who they are, instead of scripts & rigid processes they are given the freedom to let their true personalities shine during each interaction with the customers.

Service Leaders as Reflective Practitioners coach their team members to look at every customer situation as unique and help them to balance between rigor and relevance to walk in the swampy, low land. The passion & ownership of vegetable vendor & Zappos employee needs to be ignited in every individual worker and that happens only when we have a shared Vision and employees are given the freedom to let their true personalities shine during each customer interaction.

Copyright Sunil P Rangreji