Customer Service or Lip Service?

Customer Service is in the process. If organizations do not have processes that support the ultimate expectations of the customer, while maintaining profitability and environmental sustainability, they must implement those processes to support strategic goals. The desire to deliver and the capability to do so are separated by the processes and the measurements used to gauge satisfaction. Without support processes, the result is Lip Service.

In a previous blog, Airlines Need Down-to-Earth E-waste Solution, I lamented about an airline contributing to the problem of e-waste by throwing away headphones. During my next business flight, I sought to investigate what the airline did with discarded headphones.

I purchased a pair so I could see if my previous experience was related to the individual behavior of one flight attendant or if it was common practice of the airline. When an announcement came at the end of the flight that attendants would be collecting discarded headphones, I was pleased to hear them recommend that passengers keep headphones—which, like used computers, are a form of e-waste—for future flights. Otherwise, they said, the airline would recycle them. The analyst in me would not allow this one comment to totally flip the script on my original theory.

If the airline says it recycles headphones, I thought, it must also create an efficient and cost-effective process for recycling electronic scrap. Mixing non-recyclables and recyclables when it would be extremely easy to keep them separate would be both inefficient and cost prohibitive.

The airline failed my process quality quiz: the attendants mixed the headphones and trash, placing my half-eaten apple in the same plastic bag as other discarded items.

I believe the airline needs to back up its recycling announcement with its internal business practices. If an organization truly wants to provide good customer service to its patrons, then it must develop processes that support the ability to efficiently and cost effectively achieve the objective that is strategically aligned with business goals. Organizational capability is based in the foundation of the processes that support it.

As a customer being promised superior service, I expect an airline to conduct better planning, negotiate more stringent operating agreements and develop contingency plans.

"Customer Service" should not be lip service, and organizations need to demonstrate their capabilities using controlled processes and real measurements.