Mind the Gap

Whenever I host a workshop, I run an activity which shows how silo working gets in the way of creating a great customer experience.

It’s a pretty simple exercise. I just ask the team to line up in date of birth order.

There are three rules, though:

1) It’s only their birth month and day

2) They must do it in complete silence

3) They have one minute

Every time, the same things happen.

Firstly, someone slightly smugly shouts ‘Which end is January??’, at which point I remind them that they should be being silent and that shouting is definitely not silent (despite what my toddler son thinks).

Secondly, they all start using a combination of hand gestures, finger counting, and frantic pointing to try and get in the right order.

Thirdly, as they call out their birthdays to see how they’ve done, it always breaks down around April and September.

Now, this could be because people born in April and September are particularly bad at communicating. But seeing as my sister is born in one and my wife in the other, I better not suggest that as a hypothesis.

Instead, I think what’s happening here is a demonstration of silo thinking.

As soon as I set the task, three mini-groups naturally appear. Those at the start of the year, those in the middle, and those towards the end. Each group finds its own way of communicating, a certain combination of nods and numbers known only to them, which helps them get their date of birth order exact.

As their time runs out, they quickly turn to the group next to them – usually, both ‘end’ groups turn to the middle group – to make sure they’re in the right place. However, these groups have developed different ways of communicating, so the message gets confused, and invariably, a May ends up before an April, an October before a September.

It’s a lack of attention to the gaps, and the communication between the teams, that causes the problem.

This reminded me of a utility company I worked with a few years ago, responsible for laying and fixing gas pipes. There were three jobs to do: Dig the hole; fix the pipe; fill in the hole.

The regulators measured customer satisfaction in these areas, and so the scores were high. The holes were dug quickly, the problem fixed, the holes filled in.

However, customers weren’t happy. And that’s because the gaps between these jobs being completed could take days. It wasn’t clear who was responsible for keeping customers informed of progress, so residents would regularly have to live with an open hole in their street with no expectation of when it would be fixed or filled in.

Each team did their bit and did it well, but no one was overseeing the whole process, the entire experience, and so whilst each team was performing well, the customer was having a poor experience.

It’s a lack of attention to the gaps, and the communication between the teams, that causes the problem.

When it comes to understanding and mapping customer journeys, the same thing happens. Many organisations take an inside-out approach, mapping the part of the journey they’re responsible for, the channel they own, or the part they get measured on.

But for customers, their journey doesn’t work in that way.

Their journey is multi-layered, with feelings, thoughts, and actions before and after the company is involved. It’s multi-team, with many parts of the organisation involved to get to the overall outcome. And it’s multi-channel – I can’t be the only one that uses webchat whilst I’m on hold on the phone to see which gets me the answer first after the email I’ve received has failed to help.

So when assessing and designing a customer experience, work with colleagues to try and find the gaps, and then talk about how to fill them. Because if you don’t, that’s where you’re most likely to fall.

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed it, please do share. And if you need any help with improving your organisation’s customer experience, come and find me and the team at The Foundation.