It happened again. Some nutty passenger attempts blowing up a plane, and suddenly other fliers have to endure stricter screening and flying rules. And as news of the revised policy spread, the jokes about Homeland Security followed.
It happened again. Some nutty customer attempts to rip the company off, and suddenly other customers have endure stricter screening and warranty rules. And as news of the revised policy spread, the jokes about the company followed.
🙂 See where I’m going with this?
We were looking at a supplier’s quotation today and the length of ‘terms and conditions’ dwarfed the actual product description and offer. Tons of rules about being a customer, whether you are even going to buy yet. But, because of ‘policy’ and past nutty customers, all that red tape is there for the company to CYA. Just like the TSA has you take off your shoes at the airport screening station.
At least at the airport, the ‘security theater’ serves a purpose to reassure the regular passengers that they are being protected.
While some official terms with the proposal certainly give an air of formality, I see no reason to cover irrelevant facts and CYA rules that aren’t important at the proposal stage. In this particular case, the footer of every page listed the US and Canadian accounts-payable address. This is in addition to the eighteen itemized paragraphs at the end of the quote. Eighteen!
But as the manager in charge of the process, unfortunately you’re damned either way…
It was interesting that the Secretary of Homeland Security first say the system “worked really very, very smoothly”, then having to retract and clarify that statement. Accurately, the system’s reaction worked well, but that they had someone with explosives on the plane to begin with was an obvious FAIL. Amazingly, some pundits see the ‘very smoothly’ comment as an excuse to chase Janet Napolitano out of office. Now Obama is promising a review of procedures and policies. Yay, more procedures. (Similar situation now in India, too.)
Bad customers are those that sap our time, resources, control, and escalate to high visibility. And, like Ms. Napolitano, they make us look like a fool. So much better to add some CYA text that everyone can ignore. It doesn’t stop the bad customers, it just makes for an easier yardstick to measure them.
In B2B, don’t we hire smart people to be our front lines with the customer? To develop relationships and weed out the bad customers? And we still wimp out and throw all this meaningless red tape into the process. While business via a handshake may be too casual, a handshake says that we will work together and politely observe each other’s process.
To flip that all around, isn’t that one of the main reasons there are flight attendants on flights? To make a human connection to the plane, the company, and the rest of the crew? Oh, and they’re the ones who go thru the useless safety briefing at the beginning of the flight. Nevermind. 🙂