dispatches from the new world of work

What Did Brown Do To You?

Here's an entry from Mike Neiss, long-time Tom Peters Company consultant, who has posted here before:

Having had the great opportunity to spend my formative business years at United Parcel Service, I was more than a little interested in the Citigroup "lost package" story. UPS has built a spectacular high-performance culture, with a workforce that strives to out-work the competition. So, my initial emotion was one of empathy for the UPS employees directly involved in this incident. I know they lost some sleep over this big service failure. But then I thought about what my emotion might be if I were one of the 3.9 million whose financial security was breached. With the technology used these days to track packages, a loss such as this is unacceptable. I would be angry.

One exercise I use in my consulting work is to draw a small black circle in the middle of a large sheet of white paper. I ask people to tell me what they see. They always see the black circle, the blemish, instead of the larger white space. This is a black circle for UPS. By 9:00 a.m. on the morning following the incident, a Google search turned up 360 news stories from around the world documenting this incident. Through 100 years of business, UPS has built considerable white space. My question to you all is simple. Will this service breach influence your choice of shippers? What are your thoughts on how this affected the UPS brand? Have they laid a foundation of enough white space to be forgiven for this blemish?

Mike Neiss posted this on 06/09/05.

Comments

Many years ago I read a story about a clothing store that sold an estimated 5,000 pairs of jeans in a year. If only one of those pair of pants have a fault then the quality metric of 99.9998% would even amaze the very best CMM expert. However, for that single customer the company screwed up 100% of the time. The old saying is that we would only tell a single person about great customer service, but we will tell 10 people about a bad experience. Thus, that single pair of jeans had a customer impact of 11 individuals. In the UPS situation, that single impact number was in the millions. Perhaps as the world gets more and more integrated, those impact numbers will increasingly rise.

Posted by RTodd at June 9, 2005 10:33 AM

This story makes me think about Jonah. Yes, the dude in the Bible that got swallowed by a seriously large fish. (still wonder what type of fish that would have been?)

Bottom line of the story -
God wanted the Ninevites to change their ways. He wanted Jonah (see UPS?) to deliver the message. Well, in this story Jonah didn't even want to deliver the message of compassion God wanted delivered. Jonah, in disobedience, chose not to deliver the message. (Not what UPS did, but work with me). Jonah, as he's trying to bail on the scene suddenly finds himself swallowed up by a huge fish. At this point, things are looking pretty bad (UPS now has a PR challenge in fixing consumer confidence). However, Jonah comes to his senses and asks forgiveness from God and expresses interest in making things right by going to Ninevah if only he wasn't in the fish. Gee - what do you know. The fish spat Jonah out and he (Jonah) went on to Ninevah to deliver his message from God. What happened? God showed Jonah mercy (not giving him the punishment he deserved...likely death) and he got a second chance to prove himself.

Yes, for that one person, or 3.9 million, it feels like the world's worst mistake. But, if UPS works hard to rectify the mistake - in whatever way they're able to - the consumers shouldn't carry a grudge over this.

It's not UPS's fault as an entire organization that this happened - and it's not Citi's fault because they're the ones who picked UPS. Mistakes happen.

To finally get around to answering your question, Cathy - nope. This won't change my use of UPS for shipping. If I was one of the 3.9 million whose info was lost - it still wouldn't have. I'd change info that needed changing and would get on with my life.

If you were the one who blew it that big, wouldn't you want a chance to make it right?

Posted by Tony May / Mayday Media at June 9, 2005 4:33 PM

R Todd and Tony:

Thanks for the comments...I too am willing to accept one lost package. My bet is that the error happened at the Citibank shipping dock before UPS had it. Mistakes do happen...but when it impacts 3.9 million...yeooowwww...By the way, my shipment of golf balls arrived today, intact and on time. I was able to follow the whole delivery cycle on UPS tracking...Thanks for the comments...

Mike

Posted by Mike Neiss at June 9, 2005 7:58 PM

It's true that we should strive for perfection and it's true that a high profile incident like this is at best embarassing and at worst will lose customers. But I agree: we need to be realistic and accept that from time to time we all screw up. I have another question though: why was Citibank sending such a sensitive package through a public parcels network? Given we all know there are failures from time to time, didn't someone think that this package was of such sensitivity that it ought to go via a courier or a dedicated delivery? Citibank may have outsourced their logistics but they haven't completely outsourced their obligation to think and to take some responsibility.

Posted by Mark JF at June 10, 2005 2:40 AM

Hey Tom and Mike,

I think we should also analyse Arthur Andersen the same way as you analyse UPS.

Lots of white space, great people, legions of happy customers, phenomenal brand ...

Regards, Arun

Posted by Arun Sadhashivan at June 10, 2005 7:04 AM

Arun

Nice to see you again. I must admit a little bias concerning UPS. Although I haven't worked there in 20 years, I still have brown blood! I am a little intrigued by UPS's handling of the pr...very quiet about it. Tell me more about your thoughts on Andersen and how it relates...looking forward to reading you...

Best, Mike

Posted by Mike Neiss at June 10, 2005 9:13 AM

There is more to this story than an operational error. If the package was misdirected wouldn't the mistaken recepient notify UPS of the erroneous delivery.

Posted by Tucker at June 10, 2005 11:35 AM