Order Management – Don’t let your customer experience become a comedy.

There is great humour to be found in poor order management. So long as one is the outside observer and not the recipient of course.

We need only look nostalgically back towards some of the best loved comedy sitcoms to quickly recognise this. Take for example two of the most revered; Fawlty Towers and Only Fools and Horses, where we respectively follow the self-destructive management styles of Basil Fawlty and Derek ‘Del Boy’ Trotter, along with their endlessly dedicated yet decidedly inept colleagues. In total the former only broadcast for two, six episodes, seasons whilst the later went on a 20-year run, yet in both it is clear to see that the potential situational material derived from these very simple Business scenarios is near endless. The reason we find such a depth of error strewn capers is that successfully fulfilling an order to customer expectations is no mean feat.

Certainly, in new or small business scenarios a significant amount of energy and resource is directed towards sales and marketing processes. Such that ‘we’ll worry about the orders when they come in’ becomes a common mantra. It’s certainly one that Del Boy diligently adhered to a fault. There are also Order Management situations, as we see from Fawlty Towers, where almost no emphasis is placed upon front line sales at all, such that the walk-in customer immediately becomes a nuisance rather than a potential asset. In such scenarios, because new sales are assumed or innate to the business, mistakes are usually made in underestimating the number of processes that are then wrapped up within each order i.e., it is quickly taken without due care or attention being placed upon the follow-on delivery process.

Fawlty Towers is portrayed as a Torque bed and breakfast, so whilst a holidaying guest might come in from the street and make a singular order, let’s say for a couple of nights at full board, there is in practice a large number of distinct products and services that then become attributed to it; such as room size, window/view preference, luggage portering, breakfast and dinner time slots, menu choices, etc. Each of these areas of delivery therefore need to be agreed, understood, communicated, and accurately implemented across the whole organisation, if it is to successfully fulfil the order and create a positive customer experience. By extension it then follows that the potential failure points across this, often complicated, process is also where we find the near endless nature of our situational comedies.

So what Business lessons can we take from Basil and Del Boy’s Order Management failures?

Well for starters it is easy to get carried away with sales opportunity and forget about the importance of successfully servicing those orders. Only when the entire process is completed can the customer experience be adjudged, and the opportunity realisation be considered a success or failure.

Secondly, even simple orders can have multiple facets, each of which needs to be accurately managed across the organisation to avoid a mismatch against customer expectation. Without a tool to manage this, errors and frustrations can quickly escalate.

At Gravity Business solutions we believe that Order Management is the fastest route to organisational success, particularly when looking at growth factors and repeat business. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most overlooked areas of business process, often leading to organisational stagnation and failure.

Don’t let your customer experience become a comedy. Get full business clarity with Gravity Workplace.        

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash