The Nestling Principle: Why Rigid Processes Cost Customers and Efficiency
An experience everyone knows
A problem with the software or the phone line. The call for help goes out — to the call centre, to support. And then: questions about the customer number. The case number. The other case number. The transfer. The wrong department. The hold queue.
The provider has its processes — optimised for costs and internal priorities. Just not for what the individual caller needs right now. Nothing nestles there. You get passed along.
The principle
Employees, teams and departments with enough flexibility and scope of their own — combined with a correctly dosed incentive — are able to adapt exactly. And continuously anew, even when the requirements of customers or the company change.
This creates an almost gapless nestling against the needs of customers — so they can pursue their core business, well supported.
The difference in one picture
Original diagrams from the author’s specialist article.
The hidden inefficiencies
Inefficiency rarely shows itself openly. It hides in things that „just run that way“:
Services nobody needs: creating and managing customer and case numbers is an internal matter — the customer should not be burdened with it.
Meetings over people’s heads: clarifications run through hierarchies, results are passed on as instructions to the people doing the work — with losses and misunderstandings at every station.
The better way
The directly responsible doers clarify with the customer themselves. They have the incentive and the necessary freedom to carry out tasks and make decisions so that customers are very satisfied.
How do you create this scope, freedom and incentive for the directly executing specialists? Through the task exchange — awarded with the SERVICE MANAGEMENT Prize of KVD e.V. Today as software: GoodPoints.
Why hardly anyone does it
That the idea has hardly ever been implemented correctly and tested is due to inertia, adjustment pressure and the fear of mistakes when entering new territory. Understandable — but expensive. Because:
„The correctly introduced dispatching process itself will transform the world of work — revolutionise it, even. Companies and organisations that get this right first will achieve a noticeable competitive advantage for years.“
This demands courage and vigour from management. It is new territory — but it is new territory that has been entered: the successful industrial pilot took place (+20 % productivity, 2006).
The look ahead
Systems and organisations must be designed so they can change themselves when conditions change — searching for new variants, testing them, and if unsuccessful, discarding them and continuing the search. Growing markets conceal the consequences of rigid alignment. When markets shrink or realign, flexible, intelligent action is no longer a nice-to-have. It is vital for survival.
There is great potential to create customer value, secure loyalty — and earn your own profit along the way. The first step is small: test the model yourself.