It’s Not That We’re Worse…

    0
    0

    The Middle Seat – WSJ.com

    Quick story here, not so much about Lean but about customer service and general incompetence. The WSJ shares data about how complaints about the Transportation Security Administration have jumped:

    “Complaints to the TSA about security courtesy, procedures, processing time and personal property fell sharply during the first five months of the year, but began climbing in June, with a 9.2% jump in the total number of complaints, compared with June 2006. By August, total service complaints were 88.1% higher than a year earlier, and September, the most recent month reported by the government, saw a 71.4% increase in TSA complaints.”

    That might seem to be a clear indicator that service has gotten really bad. Not so, says the TSA leadership. You see, in the past they weren't even able to count or track all complaints properly… so instead of complaints going up, what you really have is just better tracking. So hurray for the TSA?

    “The TSA concedes it was missing and underreporting complaints in the past, with travelers either frustrated at getting busy signals on phone lines (1-866-289-9673) and never recording a complaint, or emails (TSA-ContactCenter@dhs.gov) not being properly handled. The numbers suggest the TSA was missing a very large chunk of complaints.”

    The TSA has a new “customer service” center with better software for tracking these problems and complaints. That's not really getting to the root cause of the poor attitudes and the cause of the complaints, is it?

    I guess there is a parallel to manufacturing, if your scrap or defect rate went up, only because you weren't inspecting products at the end of the line or tracking defects before? Maybe the surest path to “zero defects” or Six Sigma quality levels is to not count or track it!!! :-)

    Please check out my main blog page at www.leanblog.org

    The RSS feed content you are reading is copyrighted by the author, Mark Graban.

    , , , on the author's copyright.


    What do you think? Please scroll down (or click) to post a comment. Or please share the post with your thoughts on LinkedIn – and follow me or connect with me there.

    Did you like this post? Make sure you don't miss a post or podcast — Subscribe to get notified about posts via email daily or weekly.


    Check out my latest book, The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation:

    Get New Posts Sent To You

    Select list(s):
    Previous articleLean Cannot be Measured by Inventory Alone
    Next articleNUMMI Employee Says Plant Hides Defects
    Mark Graban
    Mark Graban is an internationally-recognized consultant, author, and professional speaker, and podcaster with experience in healthcare, manufacturing, and startups. Mark's new book is The Mistakes That Make Us: Cultivating a Culture of Learning and Innovation. He is also the author of Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More, the Shingo Award-winning books Lean Hospitals and Healthcare Kaizen, and the anthology Practicing Lean. Mark is also a Senior Advisor to the technology company KaiNexus.

    LEAVE A REPLY

    Please enter your comment!
    Please enter your name here

    This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.