Whenever I walk into an organization and start to hear blame placed on the worker, I become skeptical.  Representative of this was Michael Rubin, CEO of GSI Commerce.  In the show Undercover Boss, Michael Rubin sits with “Danielle” an employee of his company in the Escalations Department to discover (undercover) how his organization performs.

Danielle in handling escalations has to listen to customers that are presenting failure demand (demand caused by a failure to do something or do something right for a customer).  And the fact there is an Escalations Department is evidence that they have plenty of failure demand.  Dissatisfied customers calling in after failure occurs from any number of points in the system that produce failure.

Like most service organizations, failure demand exists at GSI because of the design and management of the work.  The system that hired, trained and caused the failure demand was designed by management.  Danielle may or may not be the right person for Escalations, but the system in place is not her fault.

In fact, Michael Rubin is more to blame than Danielle as management is responsible for the system in place.  The sad part is that the company is losing millions of dollars in potential revenue and costs as errors are addressed through Escalation Departments and not systemically.  Could you imagine if the design and management of the work were better and there wasn’t a need to pacify customers?

Other questions arise; why couldn’t the person that took the call handle it?  Why do we need more waste in the system to have another hand-off to another group?  Waste begets waste in systems that are poorly designed and with flawed thinking such as GSI.

I am yet to see a call center with less than 25% failure demand and some have as much as 90+%.  This offers us our greatest opportunity to improve in systems that call centers are a part.  Reduce the amount of failure demand (a systemic issue caused by all areas and not just the call center) and profit gets better.

For Danielle she is a victim a system that is poorly designed.  Either by allowing her to be in a job that she is not suited or by creating a work design that is so horrific that no one could be successful.  Regardless, Michael Rubin you invented it.

Leave me a comment. . . share your opinion!  Click on comments below.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work.  Download free from www.newsystemsthinking.com “Understanding Your Organization as a System” and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about our intervention services at info@newsystemsthinking.com.  Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbitt or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.

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