If You Don’t Know WHY, You're Hurting Your Customers

Understanding the process is more important than following it 🧩 A story about buying nuts at a Christmas market 🧩 Why you should dig deeper and learn the process end goal

Photo by Catrina Carrigan on Unsplash

👉 Understanding the Process Is More Important Than Following It

Many people don’t realize this, especially when it comes to servicing direct customers. They feel that if there is a process, it was designed by someone smarter for reasons only known to them, therefore we all (customers included) must follow the process even if we don’t understand it.

Here is where this logic falls short: There is no such thing as a perfect process. That means we’ll always have use cases that are outside of what our process can handle. This is exactly why we need to hire a person to address those edge use cases - and that’s what a Customer Care team does.

If you are a Customer Care representative, your job is to figure out how the customers can get your product or service (and experience all of its features), even though they cannot follow your process (fully). Your job is NOT to force fit the customers into your process - they already tried it and it didn’t work for them. Now, you have to find a way to achieve the same results by designing a workaround.

To design viable workarounds, you’ll need to know two things:

1. WHAT your process aims to achieve and HOW (more details here).

2. What your customer’s constraints are in terms of following the process (the HOW).

You won’t be able to design working solutions if you only know your customer’s constraints, but not what your process aims to achieve. Why is that?

Imagine your process takes someone from point A to point B, and then to point C (the end goal). However, your customer is in point E (see diagram below). They call you and ask how they can get to C.

After analyzing their situation, you realize that the related points to them are D and F. However, they cannot reach point D; they can only reach point F (see arrow direction). And since A and B are out of reach as well, their only path is E to F to C.

Now, imagine the link to C doesn’t exist (diagram below). Meaning, you only know you have to do A and B in your process, but you have no idea why. Your customer calls you with their problem, and you realize they’re in point E. How can you help them? You can’t. All you know is A and B, and unless they are in one of these two points, it looks like all Hell will break loose - and that cannot be allowed, can it? 😉

Let me tell you a story:

🥜 The Nuts That Drive You Nuts

One winter evening my husband and I went to a Christmas market. We saw a stand selling a huge selection of caramelized nuts. Each box contained a different type of nuts, each of them priced at €4 for 100 grams. Then there was one box with mixed nuts of all the types - also €4/100gr.

I wanted mixed nuts, but not from all types - just from three of them. And the pricing was very convenient - I knew that whatever combination I made, I had to pay €4/100gr, no brainer. My husband only wanted hazelnuts.

So, I approached the lady behind the counter and said:

“I'd like to have 100 grams of these three types of nuts. Would you please mix them in one bag for me? And, also…”

“No, I can't,” she replied.

“You can't what?” I asked surprised.

“I can't make you a custom mix,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because we already have mixed nuts. I can put you from those.”

“But they are more than ten different types and I only want three. I don't eat the other types.”

“No, I can't do that.”

Now, at this point, I started getting annoyed since, obviously, this process made no sense.

“What's preventing you from mixing three types of nuts for me for 100 grams?” I started investigating. “It's certainly not the pricing, because clearly I'll pay €4 for them. So what is it?”

“It's not the pricing; it's our policy - we already have mixed nuts,” she replied.

“But those are not the mixed nuts I want,” I continued.

“That doesn't matter. We already have mixed nuts - I can put you from them.”

“As I already said, I don't want from them.”

“Then there's nothing I can do for you.”

“Why not?” I was already angry. “Aren't you here to sell nuts?” I asked in an attempt to shift her focus to the main goal.

“Excuse me?”

“Aren't you here to sell nuts?” I repeated.

“Yes, of course, we are!”

“Good! Because I'm here to buy nuts. I want from these three types in one bag of 100 grams, please, and I already have my €4 waiting for you right here.”

I waved the money I was holding in my hand the whole time.

“I can't give you from these nuts,” she said again.

“Who says you can't give me from these nuts?”

“Excuse me?”

“Who designed that policy of yours that says you can't give me the nuts I want?”

“My manager!”

“Where is your manager? I want to speak to them.”

“You can't speak to my manager!”

“Why not? I want to speak to the manager, so bring the manager!”

At that point, she was utterly confused and started looking around for help. She had a colleague, a young boy, serving the other customers, while she and I were having this argument. He looked at her and asked:

“What's going on?”

“She wants a different type of mixed nuts,” the lady explained aghast.

“So what?” he said. “Give it to her.”

“But…” she was lost for words.

“Just give it to her,” the boy repeated. “Why is that a problem even?!” and he moved on to continue serving the other customers.

Seeing she had no other choice, she put the nuts I wanted in one bag, measured it to 100 grams, wrapped it up, and threw it in my face.

“Four euros!” she yelled at me.

“Yes, thank you,” I said in my sweetest voice. “And I also want another bag of 100 grams only with hazelnuts, please.”

She took another bag, put only hazelnuts in it, measured it to 100 grams, wrapped it up, and threw that in my face too.

“Eight euros!” she yelled a second time.

I paid my eight euros, took both bags, gave the hazelnuts to my husband, who was standing on the side speechless, watching the whole scene unfold, and we moved to a bar table to eat our nuts and drink Glühwein.

© Randy Glasbergen

⛏️ Why You Should Dig Deeper

Luckily, this event didn't spoil our evening, quite the opposite - we had a good laugh. However, to this day, I'm amazed by how adamant some people are to follow processes to the letter. It doesn't matter what the process is: If there is a process, they'll go out of their way - and out of any logic - to follow it.

In my books, you should try to understand the process first, think about what you’re asked to do, and if you can't grasp the logic, dig deeper - or refuse to do it. After all, what if the process asks you to do something that’s in contradiction with your personal values - would you still do it? But if you understand the reasons behind it, you agree with those reasons, and you see there’s no other way, would you do it then?

How often do you see a process asking you point-blank to do something unethical, immoral, or illegal? Never, right? And yet, quite often we hear about the newest scandal with a company that broke some laws and regulations and is now facing huge fines, and even jail time for its CxOs.

How does that happen? It’s the “divide and conquer” principle in action: Break a huge process into endless steps, distribute those steps to different teams to execute, and voilà - no one will be able to track the process end-to-end and understand what it is they actually contribute to.

Who’s carrying the responsibility then? You can say it’s the CxO, and I’ll agree - on paper, it’s them. But if you knew you were a part of this too, would you be able to sleep well at night? After all, you did what needed to be done. Without countless people like you, the CxO plan would’ve never succeeded.

Here’s how it looks from the other side of the table: I design processes for a living and, as strange as this might sound, I need you to question me. I need your feedback on the processes I design - how else would I know what works and what doesn’t?! I literally can’t do my job effectively if you only follow blindly whatever I present to you.

That’s why I cringe when I hear “just give us the templates to follow so we can be compliant and that’s that”. No process can substitute for human thinking - not even an AI-based one. Always use your brains first, process second.

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