PlusOne - Musings of a marketer

Hurricane Katrina has brought destruction hitherto unseen in the USA. Potentially worse than the hours of the hurricane’s assault on land, has been the widely criticised response by authorities to the human need in the hours and days of the aftermath.

When one considers the USA’s ability to send mighty forces halfway around the world, to ingratiate itself on the day to day workings of foreign governments and to impose its will on the unwilling, the impotence in their ability get it right at home when they are needed is similar to many businesses inability do deal with certain business aspects.

WHAT? I hear you ask, has this got to do with business….

Simply put, the US has been ‘very good’ on external ‘customer service’, but damned poor at ‘internal customer service’ - not unlike many businesses. It is not a bad thing to have a positive external customer service mentality, but don’t forget about the people in your own organisation (or country).

There are many similarities between the response to Hurricane Katrina and internal customer service.

First it appears that the need was ignored. In many businesses internal needs are discounted because the impact on the bottom line cannot be easily measured as external factors. This hidden impact sneaks up and can either insidiously eat away at the organisation or can have a very obviously have an impact through the business suddenly finding itself in financial difficulties and internally gridlocked.

In the case of Katrina, everybody knew the thing was going to cross the land, with hugely strong winds. The insidious aspect has been the non-collaboration between state and federal authorities (perhaps down to county level) for possibly many years (the United part of states falls apart when it comes to jurisdictions) in planning for such an event and the obvious, has been, well the bloody obvious….

Second is related strongly to the first - that is departments within businesses only do their own stuff. There is not a holistic approach to company-wide issues. Accounts does not talk with processing, who does not talk to sales etc. This culture extends right down to individuals. Everyone in the company has needs and they are all customers. It is just that they are internal so therefore it does not seem to matter because we cannot easily measure helping them like we can measure making more sales and it is the sales staff who do customer service, right?

In the Katrina aftermath it seems one state could not easily talk with another. Reports of red tape stopping the aid process abound - permission to access another state’s National Guard had to be obtained, further slowing down the aid process.

Finally, in this short comparison, is that in many companies (we may only be talking of 10 staff) there is often a lack of leadership in internal customer service. Someone needs to drive the culture till the culture becomes part of the norm. This way there is no insidious creep resulting in a blowout.

In the USA no-one took charge. Three days before and three days after, it was a case of bureaucratic paralysis from the President down. There was no Bruce Willis character to take control, no united response. The longer-term impact of this will be played out in the months and years to come through Congressional investigations.

Internal customer service is important. In fact it is just as important as external customer service because at the end of the day, the paying customer is the one who will get frustrated by internal issues. There is a great deal of transparency in any business when there are internal problems. A customer does not have to be very astute to pick up on them and if it has any negative impact, you will have lost them as a customer.

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