Roaring with laughter you banish the pain

Jasper van Kuijk shared such a kick in the Volkskrant last weekend. With some raunchy quotes, he explained how strange it is that organizations are increasingly asking to assess the performance of individual employees. You have renewed your subscription with a telecom provider and are then asked by e-mail to rate the lady or gentleman on the other end of the line. In itself not so strange, observes Van Kuijk, if the lady or gentleman in question had had all the room in the world to make maximum efforts to provide the best possible service. But that's where it goes wrong. Managers and boards determine how much leeway there is to serve customers well. And that leeway is often limited. So can you blame the grumpy bus driver who drives off just in front of you for his behavior when he is being charged harshly by his boss for every minute of delay (remember the pee break discussion?)?

Van Kuijk has a good point here. What he actually addresses is that the human dimension in organizations is often subordinated to strict rules, procedures and systems. All are designed with the best of intentions to make the organization more customer-driven and to strengthen competitiveness. But completely ignoring the fact that employees are not robots who need fixed job descriptions but flesh-and-blood people who can think and act for themselves. Last year I interviewed Rijn Vogelaar about this. He said then in a similar context "employers must be aware that if you start seeing employees as people again, you also understand that this is not a tenable situation. The nail on the head. I can recount countless situations in which I had to grit my teeth and drag myself through a huge bureaucratic mess to cancel a subscription or change an address, only to be asked how well Edwin had helped me. Heavily irritated, I then gave Edwin a four, even though Edwin was never the problem. The problem was that Edwin was only allowed to send standard e-mails. The problem was that Edwin was not allowed to transfer me to the department that could help me. The problem was that Edwin had to handle my call in one minute twenty. The problem was that Edwin got paid per case handled. In short, the problem was that Edwin was not allowed to think and act for himself.

What I'm getting at is this; don't fall into the trap that customer-centricity is the same as uninhibitedly pooping out questionnaires that don't measure at all what you want to know and only give you a false sense of control. But focus on the opportunities you have to optimally empower employees for perfect customer service. By giving them autonomy, supporting them with resources, training and attention to best serve customers. If you do want to measure something, measure whether you have succeeded. Then ask Edwin if he is taken seriously by you and given sufficient time, space and resources to best serve customers.

Back to the beginning. Is this a crucial flaw in society? With a sense of understatement, perhaps not. Should it make the bosses of these organizations think? Certainly. Roaring with laughter, that is.

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