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Service is that gnawing
problem that is an issue across many industries. Late flights,
being on
hold, dry cleaning that arrives with new spots, equipment that
does not work according to expectation and then fails — all
these issues are the soup of poor service issues.
We are definitely
in the zone of damn mad and not going to take it any more. The
Silent Majority has no
one to scream at—but
rest assured they will take their dollars elsewhere.
The Internet
was one of those concepts that was going to provide more
choice, more access and visibility.
Yet, we now have an extreme
service failure with most online businesses. The hilarious personalization
of advertising a method to analyze you and provide you in selected
choices—in reality—it eyeballed space to the highest
bidder. You pay for a subscription and when you log in, it tells
you this might not be a secured site—do you wish to
continue. If you say no, then you can’t have access to
your own subscription that you paid for. To avoid being sued,
I will leave out the
name of that so-called reputable venerable universally know brand.
This
month we will look at the problem from many angles. First,
read The
Interview. Shoshana Zuboff of the
Harvard Business School and James Maxmin of Mast Global, co-authors
of
The Support Economy tackle this problem of how the Internet self-service
model has failed people. And not just the Internet, but fundamental
corporate structures have abandoned customers.
From there we move to the Stanford/Wharton Service
Supply Chain Forum we just attended in Palo Alto. This forum of
senior executives, many of them competitors (Lockheed and Boeing,
UPS and DHL, Cisco and Lucent, etc.), is coming together annually
for leaders
in service management.
One key problem in services is the extreme
outsourcing of the chain—some of this is working and some
is not. So, Carla Reed will offer some observations
about what’s
wrong with outsourcing service.
The root cause, of course, is in designing—or
not—for
serviceability, which Bill McBeath addresses this month.
As well as the Quality
issue. Dave Tabor also has a take on this.
What is key from meeting with and talking to
both consumers (remember the people who pay?) and the providers,
is the challenges involved
in reaching and caring for customers. We have a long way to
go! I invite your comments on these articles and the topic of service,
in general.
On another critical note—one that supersedes all others—is
the election.
We just fought a war theoretically to create Democracy in other
parts of the world. In addition, other nations have voter turnouts
in the 80% and up. And we just saw a huge event—it’s
been over twenty years since people had an open vote in Afghanistan.
What an inspiring event to witness. Yet not enough Americans exercise
this treasured privilege.
Whatever your point of view—please
vote!
See you next month!
http://www.chainlinkresearch.com/parallaxview
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