organisational hierarchies in practice

Last few days have seen me in a practical mode, change of mobile supplier, flipping a three year car lease into a new one and then some more.

Admitting to having the car sales chap go through a few more loops than need be, but hey, he's been to Sales Boot Camp and used "Sir" in every damned sentence so what would you expect?
Long story short, close to closing I came to my senses, did not really want the car and mailed politely a no thank you.

Of course he called within a minute, sounding desperate, to which I said he had done a grand job but we really needed something else, please do not take it personally.

His response? "What shall I say to my boss??" in an increasingly desperate tone. Duh I say.

Then, mobile phones; after 15 support calls and five registered letters last three days, I gave up and walked over to a competing supplier.

[Note: My number is now +33 6 8887 9944]

Keen on new business, my request for five lines and phones was well received. All well until the seller found that he could not supply more than three, the next two had to wait until they've seen me performing payment-wise for a month or two.

I suggested giving him a check for 500 € so they could sleep well, but no, rule's a rule. And of course, all of the local suppliers follow the same rule, aka "Best Practices".

"Centralising decentralisation", another term for "Best Practices".

Of course the bosses in the hierarchies need this, how could they ever justify their positions if underlings actually took decisions all by themselves?

Of course this is inherent in the hierarchies, sometimes very rigid, sometimes not, but always lurking.

With some important results:
1) Inefficiency.
2) I'm left with the idea that the company (read "Brand") is "Stupid".
3) Boss fear is more important than pleasing a customer.

Now I'm just waiting for the first one to start hacking away at their organisational hierarchy, when I'll be their customer faster than they can spell profit.

Ten chaps (and girls) in a room, all knowing what all do, all doing what they're best at, no funny rules needed, no titles needed.
Then extended to thousands of employees...

That's why I tinker with thingamy. To enable the ten chaps-in-a-room modus operandi to be extended to thousands.

Bugger applications and software ROI and efficiency gains, nope, it's about making organisational hierarchies less important and making customers like me happy and car sales men productive and mobile phone services acceptable.

For the millionth time, awast ye scurvy hierarchies!

[UPDATE: Dennis reminded me that my mobile phone supplier actually has a service, that you have to pay for of course, where you have one number who can circumvent the stupid hierarchy and get things done!

Some Credit Card suppliers have something of the same for Gold or Black cards and so forth…

Default service is to punch my nose repeatedly, then have me pay to end the abuse and then calling that a real customer centric service… cheeky or what?]

Comments

[Ric]

Sounds like some "Vendor Relationship Management" going on ...

[sig]

Hehe, yep, my particular brand as an answer to the "CRM" wave!

Yikes, even the part term "Relationship Management" makes me shudder...

[Ric]

Yes it's an ugly term, but designed specifically to contrast to CRM - see
http://projectvrm.org/ which references a bunch of work that Doc Searls and friends are doing ... maybe Thingamy can help?

[sig]

Hmm, interesting... think I do remember something about Doc once using the "rental car" example!

Will study, but first reaction is a bit "reaction to something stupid (being managed as customers)" while it should be the vendors who should drop all that CRM crap (ehem) and open up so there would be a real "relationship" between the two.

I'm still in no doubt that the one's who does will win, even if they send a few customers to their competitors in the process when they cannot deliver!

In that sense, but not directly linked is this one: http://www.bromptonbicycle.co.uk/index.cfm?fuseaction=Links.listlinks&CategoryID=11
Brompton bikes with links to and nice write-ups on all their competitors - that makes me trust them, and more, it shows they're a grown up and self confident company! Yay.

[Clive Birnie]

Sig, don't forget financial services co's. our bank disconnected web payments without consulting us and then made us go back through the entire sign up procedure from scratch to switch back on so we were down for several days. Followed that by failing to send us new bacs smart cards when the old ones expired and then sent ones that would not work with the software so we had to upgrade. Took 2days and 37 phone calls to fix their errors. Well they had to follow the rules... all part of the service!

[sig]

Clive, there you go!

A few thoughts:

1) All the big ones that we're dependent on are like that - banks, telecoms, utilities...
2) Then, nuts really, when competition ensues by opening up the monopolies like for the telecoms, they simply clone! That's "best practices" in practice that is!
3) Being "customer oriented" have no effect whatsoever as long as the dysfunctional hierarchical business model delivery system exist.

and, most important:

What a huge opportunity! Everybody hates their guts, we read about bad experiences every day, hear hair raising stories at lunch... I think we customers would smell the "right kind of company" a mile away!

Hmm, time for a new post ;)