(STORY NOTES: When we left my cousin, Rich, he was trying to get the (fictional) ‘MasterPro’ company’s Customer Center to retrieve the SuperChief Pro with Herculon they’d mistakenly delivered to his home and replace it with the SuperDeluxo with Fabulon, the model he had, in fact, ordered.
Nearly three weeks after he’d ordered the product, things are more confused and further from resolution than ever.
Those of you who enjoy the ‘Scream’ movies or novels by Franz Kafka about characters caught in nightmarish bureaucracies in Eastern Europe in the 1920s, are going to love this. Customer Center = Corporate Communists? Now there’s a concept that deserves some dialogue.
Like Kafka, we have assigned algebraic values to the names of the MasterPro characters, who, as you’ll see, are neither masterful nor professional.)
Rich writes:
1. I call Home Delivery, talk to X. No work order has been entered into the system by the Customer Center (CC), therefore X. can’t assign us a delivery date or time until they do that. X. puts me on hold and calls the CC himself, and they enter the work order. X. picks my call back up and asks that I call back 24 hours later. He can’t ‘access’ the work order until 24 hours after it is entered by the CC, and he can’t process a set-up appointment until he can access the work order. Essentially he can do nothing until the next day and I need to call back after 24 hours have passed to schedule the appointment for the home delivery of the SuperDeluxo with Fabulon.
2. The next afternoon, I call the CC and follow the automated voice menu. I press ‘6′ and sit on hold with no message, no music and no response for more than six minutes. I finally hang up and call again.
3. This time after pressing ‘6′ the call is answered promptly, I think by M. She verifies that the work order has just been entered but reiterates that we can’t schedule anything for 24 hours because the CC software doesn’t ‘talk’ to the Home Delivery software. I ask if there is someone she can pass my call on to who might be able to provide more assistance. M. responds no. There is no one.
4. The next day, I go to the MasterPro store at Metropolis Mall, and Z, our original salesperson, is working. Z. has been exceptionally apologetic and helpful throughout this process, and that is again the case on this day. She makes her own calls to both CC and Home Delivery and expresses her frustration that neither department seems to be interested in assisting the Customer. As I need to leave for an appointment, she offers to continue her efforts to resolve the situation and promises to follow up with me later in the day.
5. Z. calls me back a few hours later, only to report that further calls to CC, Home Delivery and someone ‘like her Store Manager’ have been futile. She says the lack of support for the CUSTOMER was very disappointing to her and she finds it odd that all these people are supposed to be working for one company and on behalf of the Customer, yet the store staff seem to be the only ones trying to assist the customer. Her frustration is evident, but is again overshadowed by her sincere regret at what is truly a simple administrative error. How it could escalate to something as difficult as this is ridiculous (my words, not hers).
6. Well, she had had it after that — plus she was leaving town the next day, so I say I will call Home Delivery myself. I called yesterday and the earliest they can come out and make the change is three weeks from now. So after I schedule that, I reach out once again to the one individual, D., who had bothered to reply to my earlier e-mails (in which she had told me she understood from the CC all the problems had been resolved to my satisfaction). D. is the Director of Public Relations for the firm. She replies that she will make some phone calls and get back to me. For once they are good to their word, she does get back to my that very same day, but only promises that someone from Home Delivery will be calling me tomorrow (today) to get another date set up. Don’t know what their working hours are but my day is almost over. I never hear from them today.
7. For a company whose product advertising claims to be a product that will make physical ailments go away and provide a healthier living environment, it makes it all the more baffling to me as to how they treat customers. Obviously you know that if we treated our customers (at Conseco Fieldhouse) that way and made them jump through so many hoops before they could spend their money with us, no question, we would be out of business and my team and I would be out of jobs. One thing is for sure, when my days of running Conseco are over, I know that there is a world of companies out there that have no clue and I can make a second career in consulting business for those that want to improve and actually care.
8. Here is an example of how we try to treat our customers: Last night in downtown Indianapolis there were three major professional sports events, all starting at 7:00 pm – Indianapolis Indians at Victory Field, Indianapolis Colts at the new Lucas Oil Stadium and our own Indiana Fever here at Conseco Fieldhouse. With all the tailgaters and what not, parking was at an absolute premium. At about 6:55 we had very long lines waiting to get into the parking garage and moving very slowly due to the fact some had complimentary parking, others had to pay and yet others park in the garage as part of their business. I contacted the manager of the garage and suggested that with all the ballgames ready to start that he should consider just getting the folks in and parked (if he still had room) – just waive them in and get them on their way. The potential for backlash of angry customers was weighed against all other options, and good customer service and preservation of future good feelings won the day. Five minutes later there was not one car in line to get in. Probably took a small hit in last night’s revenues, but it was the best option we had.
9. The latest: Home Delivery said they’d deliver the mattress last Saturday. We alter our weekend plans so someone will be home when the SuperDeluxo with Fabulon arrives. When Sabrina (Rich’s wife) calls to confirm the delivery, the people in Home Delivery act like she’s crazy. They tell her its a holiday weekend, and that they don’t do deliveries on holiday weekends. This is despite the fact that Sabrina is holding the confirmation order in her hand with last Saturday’s date on it. When the product does get delivered – if it ever does – it will not be the fulfillment of a dream, as it could have been, but the end of a nightmare. Big difference to the brand.
An undesirable artifact of the Networked World is the ability of a bureaucracy to use the network to create Endless Loops of Unproductiveness (ELUs). Such loops create a false sense of security within an organization and are completely antithetical to value-creation, transparency, customer satisfaction, and ultimately, to a brand’s liveliness in the marketplace. We have all been players, at one time or another, in SuperDeluxo scenes.
Here is the GameChangers analysis of this scene:
1. ‘Yessing’ is not the same as ‘Yes-anding’. Just saying ‘yes’ (or ‘yes-but’) to your scene partner is not enough to move the scene forward. The improviser’s obligation (IO) is to move the scene toward its objective by adding useful information or (better yet) taking productive action. Nos. 1, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 9 above demonstrate how a player can say yes to something and contribute zilch to the scene. No. 8, by contrast, shows how yes-anding moves a scene forward.
2. Customers play two roles. Unlike improv theater, where the line between the stage and the audience is clear, business scenes often blur the line, and players are frequently ‘in the audience’. An example of this is a job interview, in which the interviewer has a responsibility to make the scene productive, and then passes judgment on how productive it has been. In sales scenes, the customer always plays a duel role. Rich is a player in the SuperDeluxo scene, and he’s also the audience. As a player, he’s not enjoying the scene one bit, so it comes as no surprise that as the audience, he’s giving it a thumbs down, and if it drags on much longer, he’s going to want his money back.
3. Make strong choices! Good improvisers make strong choices, and then live with those choices. Weak improvisers, by contrast, they ummm, they, uh, they hesitate. They contradict themselves. (No, they don’t, who said they do? Because they don’t.) They repeat information, and they also repetitively generate redundant data. It’s not always easy to make strong choices, especially if, as illustrated in Nos. 4, 5 and 6 above, the culture discourages them. In the Networked World, hesitation, contradiction, repetition and other weak moves get assessed harshly by the audience and punished in the marketplace. Strong choices get rewarded. So make strong choices, improviser!
Tags: Blocking, Conseco Fieldhouse, Customer Service, Denying, Fabulon, GameChangers, Indianapolis, MasterPro, Parking, Rich Kapp, Scenes, SuperDeluxo, Yes And