Recently a few incidents have occured that have ignited my curiousity about what new challenges organizations could be facing.

An airline changed the time of one of my flights a month in advance, causing huge inconvenience and a need to shift about plans. After a frustrating interaction with their customer service in which all my requests were refused, I got an survey by SMS asking me how satisfied I was from the level of service. None of the questions actually enabled me to tell them how they had fucked up my plans.

A client of mine is looking for 3 people who have skills that are in very very short supply. As a result of the inability to recruit these people, one piece of equipment is inoperable,causing quality issues with the final product.

Developers in a company are telling the users that the service and product they bought is fraught with problems, and they recommend not using their product which is “too expensive and not what it was dressed up to be”. 

A company which until recently branded itself as the greatest people place you’ll ever see in your entire life, just fired 28% of its staff. And that is just the beginning.

In the meeting, no one is paying attention, and everyone is texting on their phone. The meeting is well organized; am important issue is being discussed. Noa is texting her daughter. Fred is texting his first wife. And Sammyis texting his son.

Challenges:

When a company does not care about customer service, how can an (inevitable) total meltdown be prevented? What are the indicators needed to point out that customers are on the breaking point? At what point do we shift from an apparent, fake customer focus to a sincere dedication to the customer?

If skills are unavailable, what machinery, technology and know how do we need to phase out, instead of pressuring Recruitment to find people who don’t exist.

If “loyalty” is passe, what basic assumptions do we need to change in the way we communicate with our customers when selling products and services?

Is fun-fun, happy-happy or wow-wow a sustainable people strategy? Or are you setting yourself up to be knocked out cold.

How can we ensure focused conversations of complex problems, when no one has the span of attention to do so?