Before I could think of an appropriate answer, a perfect opportunity arose, which did the job of answering her question and providing her with a perfect example of both a business process and how processes can ‘go wrong’.
Whilst in the car with the family, I pulled out of a retail park when the cry came from my two children, “Can we have a milkshake from…” I pulled up to the ‘first window’ to place my order and pay for the two shakes. What I had not done, was go through the drive through channel properly and place my order via the speaker and screen at the remote order station.
The staff member was not expecting me to arrive at her window unannounced. She was shocked to see me pull up: ‘How did I get there without ordering at the proper point in the process? What was she to do now? I saw panic written all over her face because her daily routine [i.e. the order/payment/sale process] had broken down. She turned to her colleague, “What do I do now?” Her supervisor also seemed flustered at this occurrence and they both referred to their computer screen, as if that was going to provide them with the answer to this problem.
The process did not allow for this ‘exception’ or perhaps, the staff members were not trained to process the order in a different way’, I am not sure which. But what I do know is that the answer came back; “You will need to drive round the building and place your order via the drive through channel, we cannot take your order here”
Had the process designer not foreseen a customer being able to drive up to a payment window without going through the drive through channel? The process was a standard organisational process, had it not been adapted for this particular site with a different layout? Had the process designer seen the exception, and judged it to be so rare an occurrence, that it was not cost effective to implement a one off process for this site?
I am not sure how this happened, but suffice to say, the staff was embarrassed at having to provide such a ridiculous solution and we, as customers, simply drove away to another vendor just 50 yards away.
In this very brief incident we witnessed a business process in action, and witnessed how business process issues [untested assumptions, and/or poor design, and/or poor staff training, and/or lack of adaptability and/or a poor cost benefit analysis], lead to a loss of revenue.
Now I accept that a the loss of a £4 drinks order hardly constitutes a disaster…but as we drove away another vehicle, a people carrier this time, pulled up to the window, without going via the drive-through channel – PANIC!
This is hardly an empirical test, but it seems as though ‘the exception’ to the standard process is not so rare, and the potential loss of income is significant when driving to a competitor is easier than driving round the building, placing the order to a disembodied voice via a speaker to then proceed, through the channel’.
