It’s your process, not mine!

Over the past two weeks I have had an interesting “experience” dealing with a courier company over getting a package containing training materials delivered to my home address. The saga started when I was away in Sydney when they tried to deliver the package (1st of August). My wife and I got back from Sydney on the 4th of August and on the 5th of August she contacted the courier company to arrange re-delivery. The company wouldn’t deal with couldn’t help her because she was not the addressee of the package the department that looked after that didn’t work on the weekend.

The following Monday (7th of August) I called them and requested that the package be re-delivered and told them that the authority to leave would be signed and on the door, and that chances are someone would be home anyway to sign for it. They confirmed that the package would be delivered, and based on the discussion I assumed it would be the following day (8th of August). It turns out that there is a 48 hours turn around time for re-delivery, I found this out after I called the courier company after the package wasn’t delivered on the 8th(my wife knew this but I had missed that detail somehow), so in fact the package should have been delivered on the 9th of August – no problems, I can handle that.

When the package didn’t arrive on the 9th I started getting a little bit frustrated and decided to call the courier company again. At this point in time the operator informed me that “they had attempted delivery on the 1st, but I wasn’t home” – I then explained to them what had happened and they told me that there was not “enquiry” in the system – I’ve got no idea what an enquiry is, its probably some kind of record in a database which supports an internal process. Once again I asked them to have the package delivered, and they said it would be there on the 10th.

On the 10th, the package did not arrive. Frustration was giving away to anger at this point. Once again I decided to call the courier company. They told me that “they had attempted delivery on the 1st, but I wasn’t home”. By this point I had started to believe that I was caught in the Groundhog Day movie.

As calmly as possible (not actually that calmly) I explained the entire saga to the operator, they mentioned that there wasn’t an enquiry in the system. Once again I requested that the package be delivered the following day (the 11th of August).

By about mid-afternoon Friday the 11th of August I was starting to get a bit concerned that the package hadn’t arrived. I called up the courier company and they told me that “they had attempted delivery on the 1st, but I wasn’t home”. I was furious – I told them that I wanted the package delivered that night. They really only committed to creating an enquiry (there is that word again) but hoped that it would be out on the truck that evening. Hope fading fast. Obviously – over the weekend I was packageless.

On Monday morning the situation was getting critical, I needed that material for a training course starting Wednesday that week and nearly two weeks after the package reached Canberra it still wasn’t in my hands. I called the courier company several times on Monday and each time I was told that “they had attempted delivery on the 1st, but I wasn’t home”.

By this stage I was beyond listening to them tell me about their enquiries and I explained to them that an enquiry is one of their own internal processes and that I don’t really care about them, I only care about the package.

Eventually I got the package delivered on Monday afternoon, but its not before I, others at Readify, and the sender wasted a few hours each chasing this up. It probably would have been cheaper for me to jump on a plane to the supplier and pick it up myself.

Process Stupidity

Unfortunately the problems I had dealing with this particular courier company is all too common, and not just with courier companies. The problem is that we are using process to absolve people of the responsibility of representing the company that they work for – so when a customer rings up and is having a bad experience – they don’t need to deal with it, the just need to invoke the next step of a re-entrant process.

This time I decided to had to write something about it, and while this post afford me the opportunity to vent, its also something that I can link to when I attempt to contact the CEO of this particular courier organisation. I haven’t mentioned the name of the courier company, but if I am successful in contacting the CEO – they will know this post is here, and they will know its about their company.

Update: Naming Names

Originally I wasn’t going to name the courier company involved but Frank has convinced me via the comments that it is the way to go. So – the name of the company is TNT Australia.