For many companies in today's economy, leaner really does mean meaner. In some cases, business has picked up but executives are reluctant to spend the money necessary to add employees.  In other cases, cut-backs were made so haphazardly that some of the best employees were laid off while poorly performing employees remain behind. Whatever is happening, there are many examples of people working so quickly that poor service is inevitable.

 

Here are a few examples:

 

The other night I witnessed a cashier at a fast food restaurant trying so hard to move quickly she misspoke every other sentence. This required her to stop and repeat each order. The cashier was smiling and friendly, but she was working so quickly it actually took her twice as long to get through each order.  

 

I emailed a customer service department a month ago with a simple question about duplicate charges. I never received a response to my email so I emailed again but still no response. I emailed another person in the organization.  Still no response.  Finally, I emailed the President of the organization who responded immediately. Now, things would get resolved, right? No, not really.  It took several more emails (and a dispute filed with my credit card company) for me to finally get a response with the promise of a refund. They also offered me a 25% discount on top of the credit I was due since it had taken them a month to resolve. They could have easily resolved the problem by quickly responding to my original email with no discount required. Unfortunately, they were so "busy" they cost themselves a lot of goodwill and 25% on top of it.

 

A technician came to our house last week to inspect a potential water leak. He was able to fix part of the problem, but he also uncovered some additional problems that required a technician with a different set of skills to fix. Unfortunately, he was in such a hurry to get to his next job that he left it up to me to call their office and schedule the next visit. I was in a hurry too, so I didn't realize at the time that we should have booked the next appointment right then and there so the job would get done quickly. From the company's point of view, their job isn't completed so they haven't gotten paid. 

 

Yes, we're all very busy, but slow it down just a bit to ensure your customers are well served. You just might save time and money in the long run!