Organizational silos. Every company - even relatively small ones - have them. And they can be insidiously destructive, resulting in behaviors or results that are inconsistent with the overall goals of the company, and almost certainly not aligned with delivering maximum value to customers.
A simple example is the all-too-common customer "tell your entire life story again" experience when being transferred from the customer service center (set up to handle sales level issues) to the technical support organization.
You know the drill. You just finished plowing through the bewildering choices in the automated telephone system, supplying a myriad of product numbers, contact info, etc., and after all your efforts, you finally get transferred to the tech support team. The person who answers is very cordial and sounds genuinely interested in solving your problem, but quickly states, "Before we get started, can I get a few basic pieces of information?" Naturally, the questions she poses to you are the same ones you just supplied to the automated system. Sound familiar? Ah, the power of silos.
If such obvious hand-off issues are so prevalent, what causes them, and, more importantly, how can they be fixed?
One of the biggest enablers of corporate silos is the relentless drive for measureable results, which drives management teams to set clearly defined metrics fully owned by a single executive or department. The trouble is, most interactions with customers cannot be handled by a single department, and that is when the silos begin to rear their ugly head in front of the customer.
The simple solution? Walk a mile in your customer's shoes!
This is easier said than done, however, since each functional organization is typically ‘maxed out' already, doing their best to perform against their own silo metrics. And, to make matters worse, it is rare to find a single organization or manager that owns the entire customer experience until you get to the CEO, which is clearly too late.
Let's look at how one Global 100 computer manufacturer successfully broke though its own silo problem and set industry-wide advances in motion. A major business unit of this company produced desktop computer systems aimed at fairly technical customers such as research labs, testing facilities and scientific universities. Given the technical background of the target audience, little attention was paid to "ease of use," and a typical system would arrive at the customer site spread across seven separate boxes, with more than a dozen user manuals. The customer was expected to assemble all the components correctly to make the entire system work. Not too surprisingly, the company began to see a drop-off in market share as users began to share their customer experience frustrations on the company's technical forum website.
Immediate attempts were initially made to "fix" the problems, but a traditional (silo) approach was used, holding each functional executive accountable for fixing his or her specific piece of the puzzle. No appreciable progress was made on turning around the sagging sales until the business unit executive in charge of the P&L for the overall system made a bold move.
The executive presented each of his senior managers a personal challenge. He instructed the executives to place an order for a system, just like a customer would, have the system delivered to their homes, and then assemble the system without any external help. Out of a staff of 11 senior managers only 2 were successful in getting the system up and running at their homes. Many encountered errors in original order configuration, resulting in the delivery of a system that was missing critical components. Others had more luck, and all the right pieces did arrive. However, that is when the organizational silo effects became apparent. Out of the seven boxes that arrived, there was no box or manual marked "Open Me First." In addition, each component came with multiple cables, but no overarching picture showing where each cable was supposed to go. In short, a frustrating experience for even the most technically inclined customer.
As a result of this eye-opening exercise, each unit leader was able to witness first-hand the negative impact of optimizing business processes by silo. Implemented changes included using "Read Me First" shipping documents, plus the now ubiquitous color coded cabling and connectors. Within six months, market share not only recovered to previous levels, but grew by 2 percentage points.
The moral of the story? Take a walk in your customer's shoes every once in a while if you want to quickly identify where to apply your energy.