Musings on Customer Service

[bjarvis]

I hate the everyone-is-a-customer mentality.

My employer today announced on the intranet that all our customers are able to now customize their own particular intranet portal for company info. I thought, gee, I didn't know we had any sort of portal for corporation's clients at all. Digging a little deeper, I realized the customers in question are actually the employees of the firm.

How can I be a customer if neither I nor my department are paying money for the service? Indeed, since the intranet systems are funded out of our internal operating budget and not via some funny money internal fund transfer from misc unrelated departments, how can they imply they're selling a service at all?

Various managers have declared our UNIX support has customers who are always right. (Except, of course, when they're not and UNIXSUPP then has to suddenly slip from mindless yes men to gatekeepers of regulations and standards.) But an arrangement of vendors and customers implies we are dealing with each other voluntarily, there's some sort of exchange of currency in return for services rendered and our relationship is transitory. There are so many holes in the philosophy the metaphor is unsustainable.

I think the better model is that of a family, for better or worse. We can't choose our relatives: whether we like each other or not, we're stuck with each other. We have to play nice with each other because no matter how much one may wish other parties to spontaneously burst into flames, it ain't gonna happen. We have collective good days when all is well and we have not-so-good days when some party or another is under fire. We get more done when we cooperate, less when we're adversarial. We don't exchange money for services but we do exchange goodwill and trust.

I'll be happier when the current fad fades and is replaced by a new one. Except, of course, when the new one is even worse. :-^

Comments

[quirkstreet.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree. The whole "everyone is a customer" thing is silly. And "the customer is always right" would be better phrased as "the customer always has a valid reason for asking for something and should be treated with respect, but you may serve them best by using your expertise to train them about why they really need something else."

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine why you would EVERY think any new system would be better.

That's the way the University is supposed to run here, too, but it doesn't. The so-called support centers of General Accounting, Purchasing and Accounts Payable just think the operating departments (like us) are there for their amusement.

[deege.livejournal.com]

Ick. You're an "internal customer" silly.

If we're all "customers" now, does that mean we're not "stakeholders" anymore?

It's so hard to keep track of which "constituencies" I'm in.

[furrbear.livejournal.com]

Except, of course, when the new one is even worse.

You know it will be. The new paradigm-du-jour is always worse than the one before. There seem to be an inverse relationship between management and employee viewpoints: Management thinks it's the new sliced bread; employees feel like they are sticking metal forks in the toaster.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Our former CEO was 'way guilty of this. It seems every time he went to Bermuda, he'd read a different magazine on the flight and would come back with a whole new corporate management paradigm, usually contradicting the prior one. No particular push got more than 75% done before it was made obsolete by the obsession du jour.

This is when I learned keep my soul in a mason jar at home.

[abqdan.livejournal.com]

No, you don't want the family model either - believe me, this is the model IT at the University adopts. "We are all family here" - a common statement in meetings. This translates into "Fred can do no wrong because he's our brother" and "We'll pick up the slack for Alice because she's our sister". It also translates into cooking schedules for everyone when any 'family' member is out sick; endless collections for Robert, who's mother's cousin's sister just had a stroke in New Orleans, and mucho other crap.

I want to be an employee. I want to turn up at work, have intelligent, motivated colleagues, do my job, and go home.

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of family in the vein of "(whiny) Are we there yet?" and "Don't make me stop this car!" and "Because I said so, that's why!" :-)