Jim Sinur

You have heard me describe broken processes in the past. See:

http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2008/09/19/broken-promises-and-broken-processes-speak-your-onions/

http://blogs.gartner.com/jim_sinur/2009/05/06/everybody-is-the-victim-of-a-poor-process/

Now I have discovered another one. I wonder, if process designers ever put themselves in the shoes of the customer? This one I will call “take my money, please”. I visited the outlet of one major wireless company to whom I am subscribed with at the moment. I know I am paying a premium for their wireless services, but they have had good customer service until now. I am reconsidering an alternative provider when my contract is up because I am paying a premium for poor customer service now.

My son-in-law and I stopped into an outlet of our common wireless provider to pick up some accessories for his phone. He was forced to sign in and chose a queue (sales or maintenance). They collected a bunch of information and said to wait until our name was called. It took about 30 seconds to find the accessories and pull a twenty out of a wallet. I saw my son-in-laws name on a monitor list at number 7. It didn’t move fro 10 minutes because they were mixing full service setup sales with cash and carry sales. The people who were coming in for quick purchases were piling into the queue to the point hat the list of name quickly grew to over 20. People behind us were complaining about the sluggishness of the line. There was only one sales person manning the register with many registers open and many folks standing around to answer questions about new services and phone features.

After 20 minutes, the crowd was growing hostile, but the manager in charge was sticking to the process that had folks that specialized for each phase of the sales process take on only the work they were slated to do. It certainly kept the job skills pure, but it created a slow boiling rage with the awaiting clients. One smart assistant manager broke the process by taking folks who had short and sharp cash and carry transactions by asking customers, if they just need to pay. If not for someone creating a shadow process, we would have been there for an hour for a 2 minute business transaction. It is a shame that someone did not simulate sales transactions that were long and short high arrival rate transactions. I saw a number of folks abandon their large tickets sales because of the length of the queue (shown on monitors through out the outlet). So they were angering clients and turning away prospects that had made up their minds on a phone and service plans. Someone did not expect nor want short cash and carry transactions. The goals were clearly wrong on this process.

Bad process abound. I’m not normally a complainer, but some of these are so bad, my grand children could see through the flaws. I will have a new wireless carrier soon.

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Category: BPM Business Process Improvement Business Rules     Tags: BPM, Business Process Improvement, Business Rules

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