Some companies are pretty good at acting quickly to resolve problems. But even if they are acting quickly, they may be repeatedly resolving the same problems for the same customers. Repeat problems shouldn’t be tolerated.
• How often are the same problems being reported by the same customers?
Say a plumbing issue in a facility occurs on Monday and the problem is resolved on Tuesday. But then the problem recurs on Wednesday. Again, the problem is reported and promptly resolved. By Friday, when the plumbing problem happens yet again, employees impacted by the issue are growing very tired of dealing with it. Management is clearly doing a poor job of really fixing the problem.
When your “help desk” or “call center” isn’t noticing patterns of poor service management, it can’t help you correct them. If you aren’t measuring data, you are missing opportunities to improve your process and your customer service experience. Letting problems repeat themselves is also a waste of time and energy for your company and its employees. It may also be pulling employees from essential core projects to handle “help desk” or “call center” communications.
Real-World Anecdote
Following the food fight incident, you and your wife are getting into the car to drive to your son Charlie’s parent-teacher conference on a Thursday afternoon. Your cell phone rings. It’s your mother, who often watches Charlie after school. She tells you that Charlie brought home a note from school on Monday about bad behavior during art class. It’s news to you. Then your wife mentions that she received a call on Wednesday that Charlie pushed a student in line. This was the first time you had heard of it. You didn’t know there was a pattern of bad behavior. You hoped the food fight was a single incident that was dealt with and wouldn’t happen again. Clearly, that was not the case. If you had the information, you could have dealt with the problem more effectively.
