I worked for a coffee shop. It was great, we only had one problem; occasionally there was a bit of a mix up at the serving hatch. The salt and sugar were in similar containers. Sometimes we put a pinch or two of salt in our customer’s coffee, not very often, and then just a little bit, because Mary kept an eye open for it, nothing to worry about.
That’s a made up story, nobody would be so stupid in real life, would they?
I have seen organisations where:
- The mail always gets routed to the wrong office and is then couriered back
- 50% of the time they hit a 5 day Service Level Agreement
- The stock database crashes with old style 7 figure parts codes, and takes 1/2 an hour to reboot
- New orders are prioritised newest first and old orders get progressively older
- Sales literature quotes two prices for the same product
- There are over 1,600 telephone numbers into 1 call centre
None of these things are worth the effort of fixing on their own, each one is just a grain of salt. There is no payback.
The coffee just gets saltier and saltier.
Small things that are broken don’t go away, they just accumulate, leaving a bad taste in your mouth. Some things just need to be fixed.
Leave a Reply