I was pointed out to this post in The Masked Blogger yesterday. A very interesting comment comes from this blog.

”

I did my weekly grocery shopping at my local Sainbury’s Supermarket yesterday. I used their self-scan handset that let’s you scan items as you select them from the shelf. This means the checkout process is quick and painless. For the third time in a row, their “system” dictated all the items be re-scaned at the checkout. Ahhhh! Turns out my purchase of 1/2 dozen re-usable carrier bags after the self-scan handset had been “loaded” at the checkout at a previous visit was flagged as a variance in items scanned. The “system” had flagged me as someone they need to double check.

I worked out I spend over (US)$10,000 a year at Sainbury’s. They left the customer relationship to be managed by the most junior and probably the lowest paid employee’s in their business and a flag in the database. A flag that was indiscriminate to a legitimate at check-out purchase. A great service (self-scanning) followed up by customer service that questioned a $10k pa customers integrity. Do Sainbury’s understand what happened yesterday?

I wonder if I offered the owner-operated deli, green grocer and general store on the local High Street their share of my $10k spend. How different would my relationship with those businesses?

”

This would seem to be a common experience. I am sure that many of us will have many other similar stories to report.What I found interesting here was the fact that the store, even though it had some cool technologies, was unable to deliver a supercool Customer Experience. I have no knowledge of Sainbury’s internal Systems. This could have been a one off case also. But it illustrates an important point.

Many business Systems even now rely on traditional, and I would say archaic methods of Business Policy enforcement.

The Business Managers are typically responsible for delivering Business Service & experience to Customers, but how much control or even visibility do they have on the policies their IT system is enforcing?

Is it even possible for a Business to monitor every Customer Contact experience?

Don’t companies invest heavily in IT Systems so that they can improve their operational efficiency?

The Business Managers know all the answers, but the junior employee down below, he uses to IT System to guide him with a Customer Contact? So, what will the Business do if the IT System is just plain Stupid?

OK, you have a cool new IT System, the best Managers in the company, but all the Business Policies are locked down in a Database in tables, stored procedures? So, how many MBA’s can even read Database Stored Procedures, let alone modifying them by themselves?

What the new breed of Customer Service needs is a separate system that the Business can use to manage the Policies that it wants the IT system to enforce!

Related Posts:

1. The Enterprise IT Challenge - The Agile Enterprise
2. Reducing Communication & Alignment Problems - The BRMS Way