I saw a comment today that reminded me that for every internal problem an organization is experiencing, it has exactly zero customers who want to hear about it. Its shareholders might want to know what the issue is and what the excuses are, but not its customers. From a post on Allpar Weblogs discussing DaimlerChrysler’s dismal performance of late:
Remember, the customer doesn’t give a damn about your problem. He only cares about his own problem.
Well actually, there is one instance when customers might care about your organization’s internal problems — when they are suing you.
A doctor-patient anaolgy won’t work here, it may be comforting and even soothing to the patient who can learn the medical details of their affliction as they try to heal but a customer simply demands satisfaction and, if he or she can’t get it, tends to litigate. Worse yet, they may post something not nice on their blog.
Update: After a little thought it occurred to me that perhaps if more companies began to open up their internal organization to the outside a bit, something like what Haystack promotes, maybe the apathy, impatience, and occasional knee-jerk animosity from customers would begin to diminish.
June 16, 2008 at 3:05 pm
That’s absolutely true. Frankly I find it amazing that so few companies will actually APOLOGIZE when they’re clearly wrong – even if it’s an empty apology like “I’m sorry you were inconvenienced.” I’ve found a simple apology to greatly change my perception of the company.
For Chrysler (there’s no DaimlerChrysler now) the problem was compounded by two factors – dealing with customers through dealers, and an absolutely horrific parent company that hated Chrysler itself and its customers, because those should have been Mercedes customers. The old company had been making strides towards intelligent dealings with customers; those were jettisoned to save a few short-term dollars.
Weblogs have defused numerous situations for some companies – Adobe when facing angry Mac users for not having a 64-bit Mac Photoshop CS4 (which turned out to be partly due to Apple reversing support for 64-bit Carbon), Microsoft with angry Mac users on Office 2008 (describing the difficulties they had and describing their own legacy code in unflattering ways), and even General Motors with Bob Lutz’s blog, when he’s not putting his foot into his mouth.
Still, as long as companies continue to put their own processes on a higher level than customers’ time and convenience, customers will continue to put their own problems far ahead of the company’s convenience. That includes horrific “push 7 for batteries, 8 for battery holders, 9 for cables, and 0 to hear this message again” type things (with the usual five or six levels), putting the customers through insane testing algorithms (”did you reinstall Windows? then I can’t talk to you about your mouse not working,”) and, if we’re talking cars, “Leave your car here for a week and we’ll see if we can figure it out, or at least find a way to blame YOU for it.”
December 12, 2008 at 3:17 pm
For what it’s worth, I think there are many customers who DO care about the company and try to help. I also think many companies actively use that to their advantage (3M, BMW) while other spurn it (any Detroit automaker). I mean, just look at the 200,000 Mile Club … or the various opinions supporting help for Chrysler now that the government has helped the financial world destroy itself …