I used to throw litter at my brothers.
It was childish. But there was a point.
If it touched you last, it was your litter.
Of course, it’d be met with cries of “mum!”
But it didn’t really matter.
There was a mess on the floor, and they were at the scene of the crime 𝘢𝘯𝘥 were the last person it touched.
And mum just wanted the mess cleaned up. Now.
I bring this up because I’ve seen it happen in two different clients in the last month.
It wasn’t litter; and my mum wasn’t there to hold my brother to account.
But in their approach to complaint handling, they’d created a set of unwritten behaviours – a culture – that did exactly this.
🐝 It didn’t address the cause of the litter (complaints).
🐝 It didn’t seek to understand how the litter ended up next to my brother (last adviser they interacted with).
🐝 It simply assigned responsibility to him (KPI)
There were processes after the event to attempt to understand the story of the litter; the root causes.
But, culturally, that is too late.
They’d unintentionally created an environment that encouraged my brother to jump out of the way and avoid the litter.
It doesn’t stop the mess.
It just moves blame and responsibility.
Next time there’s litter, how will your advisers respond?
How would you respond?
