My Job Would Be Easy Without Customers

"My job would be easier without customers."

How many times have you heard your staff or colleagues use that phrase (and many would also add "or staff...")? Generally it is when there are problems in our dealings with a client, or the commercial pressures of trying to gain sales when many staff may feel that "sales" is not their thing.

Over the last few days we've been dealing with a situation kind of in reverse to this. Our hot water service wasn't installed correctly by the builder, however none of the service people in the chain required to fix it are really taking any ownership, so I've had to push our position a little more (5 days of no hot water for baths, showers or doing dishes gets a little draining).

The builder isn't interested since the owners (we are currently renting) have paid their final payment, so the builder isn't responsible for the upkeep. The property manager looking after our house has called the appropriate people, so is following her manuals (but not following up). The manufacturer has subcontracted a plumber to check the hot water system (so the company is saying that they've done what they can). Meanwhile, the plumber contracts for a number of different companies, with many commercial contracts amongst us residential clients, so we're pushed to the bottom of his list.

Any time that I try to complain about having it fixed, each person will simply refer me on to the next person, who then will pass the blame to the next person. It all does a loop back to the builder (and given the state of some of the other aspects of the house, it doesn't surprise me that the builder has cut corners with the hot water system).

Thinking about this today, I realised that form a customer's perspective some times it would be easier to deal with organisations if the organisation's didn't have staff.

While many staff do a good job, the customer will often get different information by asking different staff members. Also, when there's an issue, it usually only gets fixed when the customer is left to arrange for it to be fixed themselves. Everyone just assumes that the person who needs to fix a problem knows about the problem, and that the problem will just magically disappear.

Unfortunately, this doesn't happen. I won't get started on the "but that's not my job" line today (I'm already worked up enough!), but if everyone in the organisation simply helped resolve the issues that the customer in front of you (or on the phone etc), then our customer's would be much happier. In this way, they'd be receiving Platinum Class Service.