Have you ever been left frustrated, fuming, or simply confused by an attempt to use a process from an organization for something that should be simple? And it turns out to be anything but?
I wanted to book an appointment with a large service provider. I went on to their website and clicked on “Book an Appointment”. It indicated there were five steps. Step One was to select the type of service I wanted. Step Two was to indicate my location. Step Three was supposed to then give me the locations near me that had appointments available. But it didn’t. It gave me a notice that said not all locations would have appointment timeslots and to click here for service locations. I clicked on the link expecting to go to Step Four. I didn’t. I went back to Step One. I tried this a few times to see if it was a temporary glitch. It wasn’t. Every time I went from Step Three back to Step One. Then I read the page at Step Three multiple times to see if I was missing something that would take me to Step Four. I wasn’t. I was caught in an endless loop going from Step One to Three and back again.
I scoured all of the pages the organization provided about this process and eventually found a phone number to call. It was for customers who had accessibility requirements. I hated to use it, but it was the only way I could find to connect to the organization. After ten minutes on hold, I booked the appointment on the phone with a very pleasant employee.
I went to the appointment, taking with me the documents I had been told I needed. When I arrived at the appointment, the customer service representative told me I needed two more documents in addition to the ones I presented, as well as a completed application form. I asked, “Why wasn’t I told that I also needed these documents? And there was no application form mentioned or provided on the website.” The representative apologized. He told me to go and get the documents and complete the application form. He would let me back into the queue once these were done. I had no choice but to comply, wasting yet more time, because I needed to complete this process. What I really wanted to do was sit down and cry with frustration.
We don’t always notice the importance of processes when they work. We just assume that when we follow the steps laid out, we will get to the outcome we are looking for. But when processes don’t work, it is frustrating. It is time consuming. It is painful. And we have to use the people resources of the organization in order to resolve it, which completely defeats the purpose of having good processes in the first place.
Think about your education organization. Are any of your processes broken? If you ask your learners, parents, partners and stakeholders about your processes, what would they say? How many customers have you lost to your broken processes? How much revenue have you lost? How much has your reputation been damaged?
Functioning and efficient processes matter.
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