Don't Claim Your Customer's Suffering from Your Management System Results are a "Learning Opportunity"

From, Microsoft finally admits that its malware-style Get Windows 10 upgrade campaign went too far":

It’s all well and good for a corporation to promise that its learning from mistakes, but it’s awful hard to believe such promises when the mistakes in question violate basic principles of software design and customer service

They are exactly right. This is one of the huge problems with the "learning from mistakes" excuse. Some mistakes are a sign of an extremely bad management system.

If you force the consequences of mistakes on your customers making up excuses about how this failure is a learning experience for you is only ok if you actually spell out how you are changing to assure you don't fail your customers due to this same management system failure again.

You need to design your systems to minimize consequences to customers when something goes wrong.

Acting as though a problem is due to some specific issue only with the exact circumstances that created the consequences is exactly the message you expect from businesses that have no respect for customers. It is exactly he cover your butt mentality of organizations you definitely do not want to be a customer of.

We need to stop accepting transparent excuses that indicate no acceptance of responsibility for mistreating customers. This wasn't a mistake about updating software. This was a mistake of a management system that allowed colossally customer hostile action to be taken and then continued and accepted meaningless excuses as if they were relevant. Microsoft manages to fail even the extremely low expectations we have for them over and over again.

I was foolish enough to continue to use Skype after Microsoft bought them. I added money to my account so that I would have access to Skype on my trip to China. 3 minutes into my first phone call they disconnected me. They then put up the most customer hostile form I have ever seen. I literally have over 30 questions that were required to be answered (things like what month and year did you sign up). I can't remember them all but at least 15 were insane to expect any customer to know. Needless to say they provided no way to contact them outside the ludicrous form. You can't have such repeated massive failures of basis common courtesy for decades without a horrible management system being in place.

It is so frustrating that such customer hostility is allowed to continue. Microsoft has a massive, decades long problem with treating customers horribly and making excuses for decades. This is just one more example of that pattern. Supposedly they are less horrible today than 20 years ago. Maybe that is true but they give me no reason to want to test out if that is true with their well publicized continuing of their customer hostile patterns.

Sure Apple's very poor software quality over the last 5+ years makes me frustrated with them. But Microsoft is much much worse so I have no desire to make from Macbook to any Microsoft software. Google has issues but if they would target users that don't have (or want to rely on) great internet connections to use their computer I would consider them. Ubuntu is the leading solution Apple has pushed me into strongly considering. The biggest issue I have not is the hardware for Ubuntu just isn't nearly as good as MacBooks. Granted the latest MacBook hardware choices Apple made are somewhat lame, but still it is much better hardware than others offer. Sadly it is stuck with their bad software and combine that with the sky high prices (the old MacBooks were expensive but well worth it) I just don't think I will buy another. While less than great I think one of the Dell laptops is in the lead for my next laptop.

You can't allow your business to treat customers horribly if you don't have a monopoly (or monopolistic position). Sadly for those stuck with Microsoft, they have close to that monopolistic position and rely on that. They have an extremely long way to go just to stop treating customers horribly. And treating an inexcusable failure as something they are learning from is yet another indication they are not learning at all.

Related: Practicing Mistake-Promoting Instead of Mistake-Proofing at Apple - Making Life Difficult for Customers - Incredibly Bad Customer Service from Discover Card

Ikea Business Model; and Growth and Society

comments on: Peak Stuff and the Hierarchy of Useless Things

"stock analysts" don't exist for Ikea. They have no stock holders. They are completely owned by a "charity."

But all you have to do is look at all the extremely highly paid executives in USA charities to see that charities often take on the form of corporations being run 1st to make executives happy and 2nd for other reasons (charitable in the instance of charities, education in the instance of large universities, profits of shareholders and all the other stakeholders in the instance of companies).

Another similar model you can view is tax evasion trusts set up by the rich which subvert the social contract. They have bought laws and regulation that allow them to set up trusts to benefit them, and/or their kids, and/or their grandkids and have those trusts treated beneficially for the rich, at the expense of society. Some argue Ikea has the same model, pretend it is a charity and use the funds primarily to benefit those creating the charity ("What emerges is an outfit that ingeniously exploits the quirks of different jurisdictions to create a charity, dedicated to a somewhat banal cause, that is not only the world's richest foundation, but is at the moment also one of its least generous"). In Ikea's case some amount does go for the "charitable purpose of Ikea": interior design.

The growth mindset certainly permeates Ikea, as it does public USA companies and "wall street."

> "not as much in the quality of customer experience"

This is so true. As a consumer, I find the customer experience painful much more often that it is good. Basically, the best it gets in the USA (for 95% of the companies) is when you don't have to interface with them at all. Then things are good. And I do think companies have made strides in removing the need to call to get things fixed... But oh my, when you do need them to actually get a hold of them the extremely bad experience is pitiful and truly far beyond pitiful most of the time. They setup extremely insulting processes that completely disrespect your time and humanity.

The horrible experiences when needing to deal with large USA companies is by far my biggest frustration of being back in the USA. As long as you don't have to contact them things are usually decent but I dread any time I need to contact one of them.

My father really liked Small is Beautiful by EF Schumacher which I think takes issue with the growth focus that permeates society (it has been decades since I read it) and instead wishes to focus on better lives not lives with more things.

Related: Kleptocrat CEOs and Their Apologists - Pretending to Listen to Customers Rather Than Actually Doing So - Why Pay Taxes or be Honest - Corrupt Looters at AIG

How Badly Are Companies Treating You?

Comment on: How well does your organization treat clients or customers?

Our reader poll today asks: How well does your organization treat clients or customers?

– Extremely well — we take great care of them: 35.17%
– Very well — we treat them better than most other companies: 34.88%
– Well — we do a decent job but could improve a bit: 25%
– Not well — we could treat them much better: 3.49%
– Poorly — I’m surprised we even still have customers: 1.45%
...
Do you agree

No I don't agree; maybe I just have the lousy sample of companies I interact with. Truthfully I don't deal with companies that treat me poorly unless I don't have a choice - but that is not uncommon at at (ISP, airlines, electric company, mortgage company...).

The survey results don't surprise me, given how out of touch executives and managers are about what their customers must put up with.

I intentionally pick companies that are good, but for example with a mortgage it is then sold and I am forced to deal with a bad company...

I am thrilled when a company treats me well (because my expectations have been so beaten down that just not being treated as a huge bother is a rare), but it is rare. Trader Joe's does consistently. My credit union does. In general restaurants do.

What I have found is that if the executives are paid more than $1,000,000 the company probably treats me very poorly. I don't think is a cause, but I do think it is correlated. The executives seem to always have room to pay themselves huge salaries but are loath to provide the customers someone that answers the phone or email without wasting tons of the customers time.

Upon my return to the USA after 4 years overseas the biggest annoyance has been dealing with these companies I am forced to deal with that treat me with complete distain. They see no problem wasting my time or forcing me to follow some idiotic processes that make life easy for them.

Related: Customers Get Dissed and Tell (2008) - Is Poor Service the Industry Standard (HP in 2006)? - Don’t Ignore Customer Complaints (2014) - Customer Service is Important (2006)

Pretending to Listen to Customers Rather Than Actually Doing So

Comment on Are You Really Listening to Your Customer or Just Going Through the Motions?

I find myself very frustrated at how incredible poor and superficial "listening to our customers" is at nearly all companies I have to deal with. It is atrocious, often beyond the superficialness of any concern is creating hoops to waste customers time who even deign to raise an issue of persistent failures by the company (I have had this with Amazon for the last 2 months - it is amazing how they expect you to repeatedly jump through hopes while they ignore you over and over). I would have dumped them for this horrible service but I can't get them to refund my sizable balance because it isn't their "policy" to bother to refund money in your balance.

A method to get useful feedback I learned maybe 20 years ago at a quality conference, it is really simple, why nearly no companies do it is a sign how little they actually care about customer service and improvement. Just ask "customers, what one thing could we do to improve?"

Then you also need systems in place to use what you learn to improve, of course.

Related: Delighting Customers - Simple Customer Care: Communicate - Poor Customer Service: Discover Card - What Job Does Your Product Do?

Customer Service is Often More Like a Mugging Than Service

It is so frustrating to deal with most companies with monopolistic positions in the USA (which is a lot of them).

I find dealing with those companies a matter of being confronted by someone trying to pick your pocket while they both ignore and insult you and give you orders about what hoops you have to jump through if you want to stop one of the things they are doing to harm you.

Some are not that bad, I get water and garbage from the local county, they are actually the best service I get from a monopolistic provider. The electricity provider is just designed mainly to make their lives easy but they don't make it horrible to deal with them.

Getting broadband (Verizon and Comcast where I am) is horrible - dealing with them is exactly what I wrote above. Health insurance (and I don't even make any claims) is bad, and if I actually got any service I imagine it would be horrible dealing with the service providers seeking to rip you off and the paperwork being a nightmare.

I avoid dealing with the monopolistic providers as much as possible but you often are stuck. For example, I can (and have) only use sensible providers to get my mortgage, but then they are sold to service companies that are horrible and I have no say in the matter.

Much more than the costs taken by companies when they can buy politicians in order to allow the abuse of the market by dominant providers I abhor the pain of dealing with these companies as a customer and the constant vigilance required to protect yourself from them ripping you off. It is like being forced to commute in a packed subway with bought off police that allow pickpocket teams to work without interference.

Related: Worst Business Practices, Fees to Pay Your Bills - Customers Get Dissed and Tell - Incredibly Bad Customer Service from Discover Card - Don’t Let the Credit Card Companies Play You for a Fool

Niche Markets

One of the things I find amazing is how focused niche markets are. I noticed this as a kid collecting baseball cards and then paying attention to all the very focused niche markets I saw. When people find it surprising that people actual focus on that I don't really find it surprising but I do still find it interesting.

Here is a good example of what I mean, a business focused on manufacturing bottle caps specifically for use in craft and jewelry projects. That is not a market I think most people think of and say wow if only I could build a business in that market I would be set.

But by focusing on customers and building your business to give customers what they want you can build a good business. That is how the Bottle Cap Company built itself. It started out selling on bottle cap products at local farmer's markets and then ended up with an extra supply and sold that on eBay. And based on that response they saw a larger global market and expanded. And now they ship products and supplies daily all over the world from their warehouse located in Nampa, Idaho.

The success of companies like Google and Apple and Tesla are interesting. But far more success is gained in small companies providing needs to niche markets. I wrote about recent lean startup weekend in Johor Bahru, Malaysia recently along the lines of providing products and services to meet customers needs and not needing to try and become the next Twitter. Sure making billions sounds nice but that is extremely unlikely. However building a successful small business is possible by managing the business well and applying good customer focus principles.

Related: What Works for One Business May Not Work For Others - Pilot on a Small Scale First, Good Advice We Often Ignore - The Customer Knows Best?

System Imposing Burden on Customers Driven by Pointy Haired Boss

When Begging for Customer Service Scores Hurts Customer Service

I always think… you want patients to say you give “excellent” service and care… then focus on providing excellent service and care! Don’t guilt trip me or don’t manipulate me… that makes me feel a bit worse about the service, when that’s not the intent. Employees shouldn’t be put in the position of begging for scores… help them provide the best service possible, instead.

The practice of telling your customer they must save you from horrible management is terrible. Managers designing a system that puts a burden on customers to rescue people from harsh treatment is about as lame as management can be. Definite Dilbert's pointy haired boss level idiocy.

Any company with this setup likely has little clue about how to use data. When you mistake the data for the proxy indication it is suppose to be a measure of you can't manage at all. Giving huge incentives to people to make the number good (like having employees impose a burden on customers to have a number better which directly burdens the customer) is idiotic.

Relate: Managing to Test Result Instead of Customer Value - Distort the data instead of improving the system - Jiro Dreams of Sushi

Customer Un-service by Automakers

Why The ‘Check Engine’ Light Must Be Banned

all the average motorist sees is that little drawing of an engine bisected by a lightning bolt. And all that tells them is basically nothing. ... the state of things now is that your car actually could do more than just throw an error code at consumers. It contains an advanced system to diagnose itself, but the actual information from that diagnosis is not available to the car's owner; the average owner must pay a dealer or mechanic to provide him or her with the codes, and what those codes mean. This is absurd. Early on, when in-dash displays were rare, one could understand why cars didn't just display what codes were being thrown (though I think a little in-dash receipt-type printer would have been cool). But today's dash displays capable of displaying text, or at a minimum numerical codes, have been commonplace in cars for at least a decade.

Exactly right.

Which is why we need a federal mandate that bans the generic "check engine" light in new cars and instead requires, on dash, OBD-II codes and a basic description.

I can understand thinking this based on the extremely poor record of manufacturers. How is this not done already? Seems very similar to their fighting air bags for decades before adding them under federal mandate. And then finding out drivers like safety and advertising about their air bags. With such past evidence I can understand thinking the manufactures are too out of touch to improve without federal mandates. Toyota, Honda, Ford, Volvo... please do what would have been the right thing a decade ago and make your diagnostics useful for customers. Don't require us to suffer until we finally have to get the government to do what you should have done years ago. I suppose maybe two million sensors on a crash test dummy helps (as Lexus keeps spouting in ads). Though I must admit it sounds an awful lot like hype, rather than valuable engineering info. I can't imagine that more than 80% of your customers would care much more about useful information from the diagnostics in their car, than flashy dummies. I find it hard to believe you get valuable information about car design from that many censors. A higher number isn't better if it doesn't translate into better design. If it does, great, we still want to know what is wrong with our car. I would think some manufactures have already done the right thing, but I don't know who. Add comments, if you know. Related: Customer Focus and Internet Travel Search - Making Life Difficult for Customers - Good Customer Service Example

Horrible Management at Airlines in the USA

It is actually laughable how obvious the problems with USA airline management are. Just go fly the cheap airlines in Asia: Firefly, Tiger Air (AirAsia I haven't flown but am not sure is a good comparison, though many people like it)... Even Malaysia Air offers some very cheap short haul flights. Then you have airlines like Singapore Air which is like professional athletes being compared to primary school athletes (that the American managers are - United, Delta, US Air...).

I flew on a 30 minutes flight (something like $20), with full food service in Malaysia. A week later I fly on American from NYC to Washington DC and due to the "short" flight time and about 5 minutes of the seat belt sign being lit due to turbulence the beverage service was canceled for our "safety." The failure of the executives of American airlines is staggering. I really can't imagine how USSR style management circa 1980 could be much worse. Yet somehow none of them bother to just give up, stop their MBA lead idiocy and just hire a bunch of people that know how to run airlines from southeast Asia. They all just want the answer to be in their spreadsheets not their utter failure of management.

Singapore Airlines has amazingly attentive flight attendants. That is the system in place. It is not a personal issue. It is a management issue. Yes their on some in the west who don't want to serve others, it might be an American airline has hired a few wrong people for the job. But mainly I think they have utterly destroyed flight attendants will with their horrible management systems that create day after day of angry customers and no way to fix the issues as a flight attendant.

I believe you take most flight attendants in the USA and put them in the Singapore Air system they will be great. It might also be a few are just not cut out for being a flight attendant (I have not question the horrible job managers have done has lead them to drive away good employees and therefore make some bad hiring decisions because they can't get the people that should be in the jobs to work for their horrible system). My guess is take most of the Singapore Air flight attendants and put them in the American system and they would quit. But if they stayed, after a year they would likely be not much different than their co-workers - unable to make the poor systems provide good results for customers, extremely frustrated...

It really is staggering how American airlines have decades of horrible management yet their are obvious examples of how to do it right a plane flight away and they can't get out of their own way to adopt decent management practices.

Reaction to: Bangkok Airways and the Power of People

Most of the Asian airlines I flew had the typical chaos boarding of USA airlines but done much more effectively. I still think they would be much better off adopting a Southwest Airlines style (Southwest Air is unique but you can do something similar even with assigned seats). One kind of did. They had you go in different lines after they checked your boarding pass - quite an affective strategy I believe (they could put first class, people needing more time... arrange people in sections of rows)...

Related: Airline Quality - CEO Flight Attendant - Southwest Not Delta or United - United Breaks Guitars

Monopolists Provide Lousy Service

I think there are many companies that obviously do not attempt to provide good customer service: airlines, large banks and Verizon are examples that have huge numbers of customers being treated very poorly. If there are options to choose decent service it doesn't bother me so much (credit unions provide a very good alternative to large banks most often). Thankfully you can often avoid United, American... by choosing Jet Blue or Southwest but obviously that is not always possible. Verizon is even more annoying because they have bought their way into very anti-competitive positions (banks and airlines also obviously have done so alos).

Near monopolies have the freedom to provide lousy service. Companies like Verizon, American, Chase, Wells Fargo... attempt to make their customer hostility sustainable by securing monopolistic positions. It has worked pretty well for them. I think we are much more likely to get customer friendly policies by new companies coming along that don't sell out the oligopolists. Unfortunately the anti competitive behavior these companies favor it just to buy out customer focused alternatives instead of providing service themselves.

Regulators allow such anti-competitive behavior is another thing we could hope to see change. But the chance of proper regulation of anti-competitive behavior is not good. And hoping those companies stop being so customer hostile is not something that will likely work. I don't see good odds that the monopolistic customer hostile companies will change. Those companies that don't have monopolistic positions are not such a big issue because after providing universally bad service they go out of business. It would be nice if our regulators didn't allow the monopolistic behavior but they obviously are going to do their part to allow capitalism to function, bad service and high prices is what we can expect from the monopolistic companies.

Re: How to Design Poor Service – Expect 100% Utilization of People or Resources

Related: Why is Customer Service So Bad? - Verizon Provides Lousy Service = Dog Bites Man - Price Discrimination in the Internet Age

Leaders Worth Following: Tony Hsieh and Jeff Bezos

Tony Hsieh and Jeff Bezos are leaders worth paying attention to. And that is rare among the well know business leaders I think. They both focus on customer focus not spreadsheets. They build successful businesses and know that it is critical to build a organization of people (not inter-changable figures on a spreadsheet).

I must admit I wouldn't have thought Zappos could be so successful. But Tony Hsieh made it work. Paying new employees to quit is not a practice many managers would have dreamed up.

Response to With 1800 employees, Hsieh is still an entrepreneur

Related: Zappos and Amazon Sitting in a Tree... - Akio Toyoda’s Message Shows Real Leadership

I have started to post some of my comments to other blogs to this blog (so I have them all in one place). My current management posts are made to the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog.

What Should Employees Do? Focus on the Purpose and Improve

What should your employees be doing? by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon

Employees all have four common requirements to guide them: - keep each customer (loyalty is critical) - find new customers -get as much money as possible from each customer (as long as it is moral, legal and ethical) - you are in business to earn money - look for efficiencies (not based just on cost-cutting, unless it comes from elimination of waste). Cost-cutting alone leads to cutting services that customers or employees value. If point 3 is causing concern for public benefit organizations, reword it to "maximize return on investment from each customer (keeping it moral, ethical, and legal)".

I don't agree with number 3. I think Jeff Bezos says it well: "There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less." I would rather be a customer AND invest in those organizations working to charge me less instead of an airline, for example, following point number 3, as stated. Also that lists seems to have nothing about "respect for people" one of the 2 pillars of lean manufacturing. The two underlying principle of the Toyota Production System are continuous improvement (kaizen, genchi genbutsu, challenge [don't accept that things can't be better]...) and respect for people (respect and teamwork). And missing much of what Dr. Deming said about purpose.

Use Internet Standards Not Silly Solutions Requiring Proprietary Operating Systems for Web Apps

Suits/MBA types must be in charge of how ABC web properties work. The site tells me:

"You have access to thousands of live events on ESPN360.com courtesy of your internet service provider."

No I don't. Your amazingly lame (likely decided upon by some suit that doesn't have a clue about internet technology or customer service) watching solution requires specific operating systems to work (Windows or Mac). I don't use those, which my browser tells your web server. In the first place, designing web solutions that are not based on web standards is very lame. Second, if you are that lame at least bother to see that you don't support the person visiting your site and don't give them false claims about your system being able to provide them access.

Related: Making Life Difficult for Customers - Customers Get Dissed and Tell - Verizon Provides Lousy Service = Dog Bites Man - How can Management Think This is Wise?