Don’t Make Things Harder For Yourself, Part 2
I’m the author of this story. Since then, I’m happy to say my coworker has (if a bit begrudgingly) accepted the work-smarter-not-harder mindset, and our new employee that was hired since that story is also getting past new-hire slowness. Granted, we’re in an overall slower period of the year, but it’s better to get issues ironed out now than when we’re getting slammed.
One day, there is a meeting between the Orders team — that’s us — and the Shipping team after the monthly managers’ meeting. This is a bit odd because normally each team breaks off and has its own individual catch-up meeting, and this one’s in the big training room with the big monitors for presentations. My group’s manager is the one heading up the meeting; she’s also been the driving force behind all the recent updates and changes to the website.
Manager: “All right, guys, I’ve got good news for a change.”
Us: *Random happy noises*
Manager: “Starting Monday, the web portal folks are going live with the address checker, so when orders are coming in, we will no longer be double-checking the addresses with Google Maps or anything else like that.”
Head Shipper: “That’s going to cause problems; plenty of things come through as the ‘right address’ that still aren’t right.”
Manager: “We’re still going to be checking for things like having the Attention in the right place, suite number on line two, obviously wrong information like ‘Main Street’ with no number — things like that. I’m saying that from now on we’re not checking for things like a city coming in as a little town but [Shipping Company] says it’s a different town or minor typos; if the zip code is correct and the street address is valid, we take it.”
Shipper: “I get that, but the customers still enter things certain ways.”
My manager takes a moment to pull up the “test site” and show the way it looks; the only new addition is the “Confirm Address” button over the “Complete Order” button.
Manager: “Take a look here. Each line that’s required has a big red ‘REQUIRED’ on it, they have to click ‘Confirm Address’ to end it, and if they refuse to use a provided corrected address, they have to select this box that states they affirm this is correct and that they are responsible for any address correction or reshipping fees it incurs.”
The two guys from shipping get up and come close, looking over the screen.
Shipper: “That looks good to me.”
Head Shipper: “Yeah, that’s perfect. My apologies; I take back what I said. People have to be complete idiots not to be able to fill that in correctly.”
Manager: “Well, I’m not in the business of calling our customers idiots, but we had to go through all this because of all the issues we’ve been having with shipments after already putting the previous notes on the page they had to confirm.”
Head Shipper: “Fair enough. No more complaints from me!”
With that, my manager turns to the coworker from my previous story with a little grin.
Manager: “You hear that, [Coworker]? YOU DON’T. HAVE. TO CHECK!”
Fortunately, the coworker shared a good laugh with us, and she got a laugh back at the manager later. She’s learning.
Question of the Week
Have you ever served a bad customer who got what they deserved?
