TOO CLOSE
TO CALL
It
was tough this year. Choosing the winner of the Dumbest Thing I Ever
Saw Business Award was harder than usual. The competition has definitely
become
more intense. In fact, it was so hard to find a winner that even after
several recounts and court challenges we had to share the first prize
between two large New Zealand corporates.
Our first joint winner of the Dumbest Thing I Ever
Saw Business Award is the marketing department of
a large oil company. Our intrepid managers
kept a close eye on competitor activity and their diligence was rewarded
when they discovered that their competitors had plans to install EFTPOS
machines at the petrol pumps. This, they quickly recognised, was a major
threat to their business because everyone else’s customers would be able
to pay at the pump while their customers would have to walk all the way
into the shop to pay for their petrol. A rapid action team was appointed
to handle the crisis. Fortunately, early meetings indicated they did have
the technology - sort of - to respond and so Project Catch Up was launched.
About 18 months and NZ$20 million later (I’m not exaggerating) our co-winners
were able to install EFTPOS machines at their own pumps. Unfortunately,
our story does not have a happy ending. It seems there are two problems.
First, the machines cost a lot of money to operate and secondly, hardly
anyone uses them. Guess what is being removed? This story is a great example
of companies developing the technology to solve a problem that, in the
customer’s mind, doesn’t exist. That’s what happens when you sit inside
your company and look out. A desk is a dangerous place from which to
view the world!
The second co-winner is the senior manager responsible
for running a call centre in a large corporate. It
seems he instructed his staff to cancel
two planned intakes of new front-line staff on the grounds that customers
were being over-serviced. You might well ask how a customer could be
over-serviced. The call centre has a standard that
requires 80% of the calls to be answered
within three rings. Their data showed that more than 80% were being answered
within that time-frame so clearly the customers were being over-serviced.
Equally clearly, no additional staff were required so recruitment was
postponed. The problem is that staff turnover in
call centres is quite high - especially
in this call centre for some reason. All of a sudden the company found
itself short of staff and since it takes several weeks to train a new
employee, it was six months before they got back
on top of the situation.
Congratulations to both of our winners. What you
did doesn’t come without
a great deal of thought, hard work and, of course, years of experience.
To the runners up, better luck for 2001.
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