Page 139 - The Voice of Authority

Although the company had an exceptionally high ac-
curacy pull rate (97.9 percent) even in the early years, oc-
casionally, they made a mistake and delivered a dozen
black staplers when the customer wanted a dozen gray sta-
plers. So their policy was to tell the customer to hold the
wrong order until the next delivery, at which time they’d
pick up the incorrect order and leave the correct item.
They calculated that it actually cost more to pick up some
wrong orders than the items were worth. So in cases where
the customer decided they didn’t want a replacement
item, they told the customer just to toss the item if they
couldn’t use it.
But their customer satisfaction surveys indicated this
was an inconvenience—small customers thought these
items were “in the way” during the interim while waiting
to place their next order. The company listened—and took
action, even though it cost them money to pick up wrong
orders. Because this information from the surveys was so
valuable to their operations and relationships with cus-
tomers, they’ve continued to repeat these surveys and to
report back to clients all the suggestions gathered—along
with the actions taken on each suggestion.
Unfortunately, not everyone understands this principle
of listening—and taking action.
A divisional director at a large telecommunications
company left his organization after a stellar 20-year career
to go to work for one of the distributors of his employer.
The reason in his own words: “They have no concern for
their people. Their managers would say, ‘My department
is going down. I need headcount. We’re sinking. Help.’
And the boss would just give the party line—‘Work harder,
call me if you need anything.’ But they never made any
changes based on the feedback they got from the field, no
matter what the changing conditions were. They were just

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