We all get them the standard email when doing business with an organization.  “We acknowledge receipt of your order” and “Thank you for your business.”  It’s appropriate to thank someone and acknowledge their order.  It is just so  . . . automated.  I like the thank you, but it doesn’t sound real or heartfelt.  I will soon forget this company and may buy from someone else just because the experience wasn’t memorable.  Some services may get away with this, but if I am spending money that is significant . . . I want more . . . your customers want more.

Technology change management has brought us email and it saves money which for the command and control thinker is a bottom-line proposition.  Order status emails makes me wonder how much money they are wasting in technology and other non-value-added tasks to tell me the status, they are locking in waste.  As a customer I am left wanting more service and am more likely to refer business with a feeling of belonging than a “cost-saving” email.  If my experience is bad or didn’t meet my expectations the “standard” survey does not account for the variety of demand that I want from a service.  Standard emails, scripts and technology can not absorb this variety and usually lead to increased costs.

The customer management process must be appropriate for this variety of demand.  We are in desperate need of methods that lead to absorbing this variety.  Studying customer demand is a good starting point.  The type and frequency of demand will tell us how to redesign our services for customers to “pull” value.  This method will allow a service organization to achieve business improvement, business cost reductions and new business with a more customer friendly and “systems thinking” work design.

Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public).  He is focused on exposing the problems of command and control management and the termination of bad service through application of new thinking . . . systems thinking.  Download free 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.