Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Dear Marriott Corp

I tried to make a $500 reservation at your place a moment ago.

When I entered my email into your reservation app, I got an error message because I did not remember my password  because evidently I signed up for your Rewards program at some point. You would have probably made me change my password anyway.

Your app said that you would email my password... But that didn't happen.

So I basically was stuck.  No password.  No way to make a reservation.

I called the 800 number listed on the app. The automated attendant couldn't understand my problem. I asked 10 times  for an operator. The attendant couldn't understand that either. Finally the automated attendant said " let me transfer you to an operator". Guess what? Office closed.  No operator.

Each one of these system failures got me just a little more frustrated.

So guess what? I got reservations at the Hilton.

So you spend millions on advertising, have some nice hotels and do maintenance so people will stay in them, people like me who pay the business rate...

I have my credit card ready to give you money...

And your terrible app cost you the sale.

Now we all know that for every customer that complains, 10 more have the problem and say nothing... So I am ready to say that your screwed up app is costing you $5000 a day and you don't realize it.

Let me know if you need some help solving this organizational efficiency problem.

Jim

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Dear Henry Ford

Thanks for having us over for fireworks the other night. I have to say that Greenfield Village is quite pleasant and you must have been proud of it.

I have to think that you, the patron saint of Organizational Efficiency would have done a 360 in the grave at the exit plan.  5000 people trying to get through a 6 foot opening in the dark while stumbling over railroad tracks was just a bit dangerous, not to mention inefficient.

You were not the patron saint of customer satisfaction though so maybe it is understandable, in an ironic way.




Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Dear Jimmy Johns

I walked into your place in Chattanooga about a month ago. I was looking for a cool, quiet place to get out of the noise of 1000 motorcyclists gathering on the street directly in front of your place. This was at about 7:30 on a Friday night I guess.

Your enlightened managers chose at that moment to move the furniture away from the wall to do cleaning. The entire crew was dragging furniture across the store floor and it was actually noisier than the motorcycles.

The irony is, with this huge crowd out front, you should have been doing everything you could to get people INTO the store. Instead, you were indifferent to customers and internally focused in the face of a potential huge opportunity with a hungry crowd outside.

Good luck keeping the doors open.

Jim

Sunday, May 1, 2016

Dear Peoria

I tried to like you. We have a lot in common. River,  industrial, the Drake/Bradley thing, and someone over there is trying to make some kind of alcohol, and it smelled pleasant and yeasty.

At Drake, they taught us that the public spaces in a place tell you a lot about the community. In your case, the public spaces are screaming "Zombie Apocalypse Stay Away. This is our bunker and we are not letting you in".

Here are some photos. Your arena, your new ballpark and the corporate HQ of your biggest employer are all sending exactly the same message. The lone building that was not bricked up or walled over or set up like a fortress was your little old train station, and that was the lone place I saw where there was a pleasant gathering of people. This was all in the most-public-facing one mile area of your town.

It seems like you should be more hopeful.

Later
Jim











Friday, April 22, 2016

Open Letter to Enterprise Rent a Car

Dear Enterprise:

I have to love your business decision to not put a spare tire in your cars anymore. I suppose it shows confidence in the tire industry which shows the progress it has made in the last few decades.

And your further business decision to charge extra for "road rescue" service means that if your car does have a flat tire you make your customers have your cars towed to your place to get them fixed at their expense.

I suppose the calculation you make is that for the time being the number of customers you tick off and will never rent from you again is smaller than the amount you make and save in by not having good customer service.

I guess your risk management people used to work for one of the cellphone companies.

Monday, April 11, 2016

Open Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Home Services

So if I am to get this straight:

Despite me paying about $20K in rent over the next year, and you getting 10% of it (about $2000) whatever you were doing on Monday afternoon was more important than meeting with a potential client.

Well, Sissy, Berkshire Hathaway Home Services will hear of this.

Jim



Sunday, April 10, 2016

Honda Recalls 143,000 Vehicles In Japan, Image On the Rocks?

Honda Motor Co. recalled about 143,000 vehicles in Japan after air bags made by Daicel Corp. — a rival of troubled Takata Corp. — failed to deploy in an accident, Bloomberg reported Thursday. The recall followed confirmation Wednesday of a death in the U.S., the tenth involving a ruptured Takata air-bag inflator in the country.

 Link to Story






So many questions.This is the "real" version of something that happens in my you tube story (the iso9001:2015 transition playlist). What do you wager that the root cause is the same? 

Check my YouTube channel www.YouTube.com/getisohelp and click the Transition playlist (the fun starts at about part 15)


Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Dear AT and T

The crew you had laying the new fiber optic cable today cut through the old one.

Of the 10 or so on the crew none could speak English.

They tried to fix the old fiber optic cable by peeling back the cover, twisting the strands together and taping it.

You have the worst customer service in America but you don't care because we just buy your products anyway.

At some point this will all catch up with you.

Friday, March 25, 2016

What drives an ISO auditor crazy...

There are abundant work instructions all nasty and greasy on a row of welders... But no one has a complete set. No work instruction for machine #1.

"Where is the work instruction for that part?'

The quality manager says "oh, it's on the line somewhere. Maybe at another machine. The official version is in the computer anyway."

"Then why do you bother to laminate some of them, and hang them up out there?"

"Well the engineer is from a well-known Asian country and he is used to it."

"And does it bother him that they are not complete?"

"He does not know the difference. Anyway that is not his responsibility"

"And do you not find it difficult to get your workers to pay ANY attention to ANY instructions? "

"No they have all been here for years. If we want to do something different we just tell them.'

" and so why don't you just take them all down? They are filthy and cluttering up the place."

"The Asians"

"So what if there are some obsolete ones?"

" we try to take the obsolete ones out"

"So these things are for decorative purposes. "

"Basically"

"So is there any impact on quality from all of this?"

"No. In fact 90 percent of our customer complaints have disappeared since they announced the closing. "

"Closing?"

"They are closing the plant. Model year phase out and they don't feel like spending the maintenance budget to bring in new models".

Me (thinking): " maybe, just maybe bad housekeeping or resistance to manufacturing discipline...or spending a lot of overhead money on work instructions that are ignored... Is not a good thing...

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Dear Detroit

Thanks for letting me visit without incident yesterday. I made it up Gratiot and down 8 mile without seeing either Eminem or Diana Ross or being held up by zombies.

I suppose there is plenty of whining about how you got into the condition you are in. I go into chaotic places all the time, and the root cause of most organizational decline, whether it be a civilization, a city, or a little machine shop is that you stubbornly expected to be able do the same things that originally made you successful forever. We know how that worked.

So now what? Why does it not get better? The lone answer is: you tolerate mediocrity.  Your citizens are so beaten down that they accept their community being the way it is.

Sorry I can't be more helpful. I do have a suggestion though. Come up with some measurements of effectiveness, and set up programs to improve. Determine what needs to be done, by when, assign accountability, dedicate resources to improvement (rather than stadiums) and do not take "we can't" for an answer. Do not expect the rest of us to solve your problems. Expect commitment  from everybody.  Audit yourself occasionally.

Sound familiar?

http://all-that-is-interesting.com/abandoned-detroit-photos

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Pizza Recall

http://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/FSIS-Content/internet/main/topics/recalls-and-public-health-alerts/recall-case-archive/archive/2016/recall-024-2016-release

To you and me, five truckloads of screwed up pizza is a lot, but in the grand immensity of the mass produced and distributed food industry it is not even a blip on the radar...

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Rental Karma

The service road into the rental car lot here in Houston is not well marked and I found myself in the middle lane needing to turn right.

I signalled in plenty of time for the two cars in back of me to see what I was doing. The closest, an idiot in a silver van, accelerated to get into my blind spot and cut me off. The second, little car of some kind, courteously slowed to let me in.

All three of us pulled in to the rental car lot. The van was forced into a long line at the check-in, but the little car and I were guided into the front of a new row, right in front of the escalator.

I approached the driver of the little car, an athletic young female. "Thank you for courteously waiting for me to change lanes" I said. She smiled and said "I had to get in that Lane myself".

" Your reward for being polite is that not only do you get to check your car in before that guy who rudely cut me off to save two seconds, but you get a shorter walk with your bag."

"Karma" she said.

"Yep. The universe  is in alignment" I responded.

Monday, February 22, 2016

Europeans: Beware of Counterfeit Motor Oil

Europeans: Beware of Counterfeit Motor Oil

 
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Ford service technicianFord service technician (Credit: Ford)
It turns out Russians are counterfeiting more than just Ray-Ban sunglasses and Under Armour clothes. Consumers across the world need to be on the lookout for counterfeit oil, thanks to some enterprising young Russians who wanted to make quick cash.
According to multiple reports, the authorities discovered the oil counterfeiting ring operating out of different “abandoned” warehouses in Russia and certain former Eastern Bloc countries like Belarus. They would use slave labor by taking advantage of undocumented immigrants, keeping the overhead low.