Our business has many people with varying roles and in its operation requires the completion of many tasks.  It sometimes baffles me how the working of the machine can blind us from common sense and simple actions.

With the implementation of our new ERP, there have been tons of these little questions about who does this or who does that since we have new ways of doing things.  Now arise all these petty disputes where we think it may be someone else’s responsibility or we think we may not have time for a particular task.

For instance, we have been discussing who takes and enters credit card information.  Is this sales at the time of order, is it accounting since they typically process payments or is it planning since they create the customer order in the system if it’s based on a contract?  On goes the internal debate and no one wants to just take the responsibility and get it done.  All the while the customer is just trying to give us money.

Another example has to do with billing addresses.  The same debate regarding responsibility and bouncing it back and forth.  Meanwhile, the customer waits to pay their invoice for product received and satisfied with.

I tell this story, not as a way to shame anyone inside my organization.  I do not want anyone to feel bad.  Of course, I want someone to take the responsibility and get it done, but there are more effective and direct ways to do that.  I tell this story as a reminder of how we let little things distract us from the real goals.  We have all been there before.  We have been both the customer and the service/product provider.

We always leave saying the same thing: “Will someone just stop and help the customer already?”

How about we do that more often, no matter whose responsibility it might technically be?