Mission impossible: not becoming a service operations nerd or junkie

Customer orientation sounds good.

Just as good as That Extra Half an Inch: Hair, Heels and Everything in Between. What are the last season shoes? What are the last season concepts?

What is customer orientation about? A company that takes care of its customers? A company that is able to provide customized products and services? Or would it be a company that asks the customer to perform some of its operations? Even free of charge?

Sometimes customers are invited to literally step into the shoes of operations managers.

Instead of calling the travel agency customers now book travel and acommodation on-line. As such, the customer becomes an active player in the order management cycle.

Recently, my alter ego booked a hotel room by e-mail and received the following…err..not confirmation, but request to perform some of the sellers quality operations:

“We confirm your accommodation booking….”

So far so good. Indeed, these five words were sufficient. They would have provided customer satisfaction if not this had followed…

“…Please check this Confirmation carefully to ensure that all details of this booking are correct…”

Interesting. Here the customer is asked to verify whether the seller has been able to receive the request by e-mail and enter it correctly into their booking systems.

Service operations nerd – at all four seasons?!

Árni