A guest leaves a room service tray outside her hotel door and it’s not picked up for hours, even as employees walk up and down the halls, practically tripping on the tray.
To her, the hotel staff just seem sloppy. It’s not helpful to explain to the guest that the problem occurs because the hotel has two different departments: food & beverage and housekeeping. Customers don’t care about your org chart.
Businesspeople are human, and tend to view their company the way they view their company. They needed to be prodded to take the leap of viewing it the way their customers do.
There is a world of difference. Amazon.com has its own curious internal terminology and organization, but you never, ever have to learn their lingo, or how the company is arranged, in order to purchase, return, cancel an item. Everything is arranged the way the customer thinks of things: “Where’s my stuff?” for example.
