Franz Kafka’s famous last novel ‘The Castle’ depicts the struggles of a protagonist named K against a faceless bureaucracy where nobody is accountable. Ironically, Kafka died before he could complete the book, so we will never know if K ultimately succeeded in his quest.
For the last four months, I have felt like K, and my ‘castle’ is an insurance company. My mistake? Upgrading to a higher-level family dental plan - since none of the dentists listed in their network was willing to take the current plan. Getting to a sales rep was easy, and it took only a few minutes to go through the upgrade. But when my wife tried to schedule a cleaning, the dentist could not verify that she was enrolled. Houston – we had a problem. So I called them.
After battling a voice response system whose prompts were clearly designed to drive callers to abandon their quest, I finally got to talk to an actual human being. We quickly figured out the root cause – the sales rep had simply forgotten to add my family members to the plan. The friendly call center rep assured me that the problem would be fixed.
A few days later I tried to schedule an appointment again, and – it was still not fixed. Which led to more calls, more transfers, more promises, but no results. Over the course of four months I called at least ten times and spent way too many hours on the phone. I was told three times that the issue had been resolved. I even got them to send me a letter saying my entire family is covered. But the dentist was still unable to verify enrollment. Truly Kafkaesque!
But I was determined to not give up until the issue was resolved. I finally ended up speaking to a supervisor, who told me to resolve the issue I’d have to complete a form, which he would get to the right person. Considering the time already invested in the process, I complied and submitted the form. Maybe this will fix it? We’ll see. I have low expectations.
As a customer, I am obviously frustrated beyond belief. But as a consultant working with companies to improve their operations, I can appreciate the experience as a real-world case study for why we need to fundamentally rethink how we design work.
In my case, the ‘job to be done’ was quite simple: adding the missing family members to the plan. Not a very difficult task. It requires entering some basic information about the new members and updating the premium to be charged. In an ideal world, the first person answering my call would be informed, empathetic, and empowered: they’d have the expertise to diagnose the problem, the ability to look at the issue from my perspective, and the authority to fix the issue on the spot.
That would not only make for happy customers and free advertising (happy customers who get their issue resolved tell 4-6 people about their experience). It would also make for happier employees. Solving a problem for a customer is gratifying. Doing the whole job from start to finish offers a sense of completion. It would also be cheap…the whole transaction should take no more than 5-10 minutes.
But that is not how things work at the Castle. Here, there is no such thing as a ‘whole job’. The process is broken into many discrete tasks, assigned to different roles and departments pointing fingers at each other. Customer service transfers to enrollment. Enrollment refers to sales. Sales recommends going back to customer service. Nobody owns the whole job, so nobody owns the problem. Employees are frustrated because they must deal with irate customers but are unable to fix the issue.
Poor work design is costly. Besides the extra hours spent on the phone talking to customers without solving the issue, it also leads to higher turnover (most call centers have a 50% turnover rate). Frustrated customers tell 9-15 others about their experience.
If you are running a customer-facing organization, here are some questions you should ask yourself:
Do you have actionable metrics for measuring customer experience and satisfaction?
What percentage of your team’s capacity is consumed by unforced errors?
Who is accountable when things go wrong?
Do they have the authority to fix those issues?
Mistakes happen. Smart executives know that - and create the conditions for employees to succeed by adopting a work design that facilitates ownership, accountability, and responsiveness.
If you are curious and want to learn more about work design, you might enjoy reading my new book “Fixing Work: A Tale about Designing Jobs Employees Love”. It tells the story of a middle manager who transforms his organization by creating intrinsically motivating jobs. Check it out!