No Fault Found: The Final Installment (a/k/a Part IV)
This is it: we've arrived at the last (but by no means least) reason why the No Fault Found (or "NFF") phenomenon is occurring. And the final award goes to.....lack of critical thinking and troubleshooting.
According to Dictionary.com, "critical thinking" means "the mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion."
I like that definition. ( thought about it critically, and decided that I liked it.) Let's go with it....
Technology companies don't use critical thinking (as defined above) when analyzing the NFF phenomenon. Oh, don't get me wrong, they see the numbers (a/k/a the "bottom line"). But they see the bottom line in isolation, not globally. And different departments within technology companies see the phenomenon differently.
For example, the logistics department sees NFF as a marketing problem (i.e., "if the marketing department would stop making promises that can't be achieved, people wouldn't be disappointed and return the products).
The marketing department sees it as a logistics problem (i.e., "if logistics would figure out a better way to handle customer returns, this wouldn't be such a big deal.")
(See the point yet? Wait, I'm just getting started).
The officers and directors of the company generally don't analyze the issue from the bottom up, they think that NFF is an unavoidable trend, and summarily add the costs of the NFF phenomenon into the prices of the products they sell. In other words, because they don't think about it globally, you pay more.
A few managers here and there might understand the issue since they often deal with regional resellers or, at times, actual end users. But what can regional managers do? They are, by definition, regional, not global, and often their voices are drowned out by the din of the overall business process, which operates on a stage much larger than any single regional manager can influence.
In sum, everyone spreads responsibility so thin for the NFF phenomenon, that no one takes responsibility for its occurrence. Since everyone thinks it's someone else's issue to deal with, the crucial step of troubleshooting the faulty paradigm described above is never accomplished.
So, what to do? Is it hopeless?
Perhaps. Unless, of course, everyone listens to me, in which case we will have a fighting chance....
Each company needs to form a steering committee comprised of marketing, logistics, and management personnel—egos should be left at the conference room door. (Trust me, I've sat through enough steering committee meetings to know that egos usually enter the room three to five seconds before the people do).
The committee should hire a firm to conduct a survey to determine why consumers are returning the company's products. With survey results in hand, and having been educated (by this blog, I hope) about the four reasons why NFF is occurring, the committee can begin to tackle the problem. I'm quite sure that a combination of changes to marketing practices (stop making promises you can't deliver on), logistics (give consumers a way to resolve the problem without returning the product to the store), and corporate strategy (make the product something the consumers will want to own, like an iPhone, or a Wii) will go a long way toward diminishing the effects of the NFF phenomenon.
Need help organizing the team? Want to know more? Call or email me. (Hey, I can't put everything I know in a blog.....)
According to Dictionary.com, "critical thinking" means "the mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion."
I like that definition. ( thought about it critically, and decided that I liked it.) Let's go with it....
Technology companies don't use critical thinking (as defined above) when analyzing the NFF phenomenon. Oh, don't get me wrong, they see the numbers (a/k/a the "bottom line"). But they see the bottom line in isolation, not globally. And different departments within technology companies see the phenomenon differently.
For example, the logistics department sees NFF as a marketing problem (i.e., "if the marketing department would stop making promises that can't be achieved, people wouldn't be disappointed and return the products).
The marketing department sees it as a logistics problem (i.e., "if logistics would figure out a better way to handle customer returns, this wouldn't be such a big deal.")
(See the point yet? Wait, I'm just getting started).
The officers and directors of the company generally don't analyze the issue from the bottom up, they think that NFF is an unavoidable trend, and summarily add the costs of the NFF phenomenon into the prices of the products they sell. In other words, because they don't think about it globally, you pay more.
A few managers here and there might understand the issue since they often deal with regional resellers or, at times, actual end users. But what can regional managers do? They are, by definition, regional, not global, and often their voices are drowned out by the din of the overall business process, which operates on a stage much larger than any single regional manager can influence.
In sum, everyone spreads responsibility so thin for the NFF phenomenon, that no one takes responsibility for its occurrence. Since everyone thinks it's someone else's issue to deal with, the crucial step of troubleshooting the faulty paradigm described above is never accomplished.
So, what to do? Is it hopeless?
Perhaps. Unless, of course, everyone listens to me, in which case we will have a fighting chance....
Each company needs to form a steering committee comprised of marketing, logistics, and management personnel—egos should be left at the conference room door. (Trust me, I've sat through enough steering committee meetings to know that egos usually enter the room three to five seconds before the people do).
The committee should hire a firm to conduct a survey to determine why consumers are returning the company's products. With survey results in hand, and having been educated (by this blog, I hope) about the four reasons why NFF is occurring, the committee can begin to tackle the problem. I'm quite sure that a combination of changes to marketing practices (stop making promises you can't deliver on), logistics (give consumers a way to resolve the problem without returning the product to the store), and corporate strategy (make the product something the consumers will want to own, like an iPhone, or a Wii) will go a long way toward diminishing the effects of the NFF phenomenon.
Need help organizing the team? Want to know more? Call or email me. (Hey, I can't put everything I know in a blog.....)
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