What’s the name of that thing?
Today we were discussing solving attendee problems at the con, and someone very helpfully told me what that process is called — Service Recovery. Service Recovery is a bit of magic, if done well it can turn a raving furious customer into your biggest supporter. You need a sincere apology and the flexibility to actually fix problems.
Now there’s another thing that I don’t know what to call it. There’s an email discussion going on, wherein one person is describing the official, documented process and the other person is commenting on the way that process is actually experienced by the people involved. Needless to say, they are somewhat talking past each other, and, I’m sure, each convinced that the other is a buffoon. There must be a word for that second, unofficial process. I just don’t know what it is.
I don’t feel too bad that our organization has both the documented process and the interpretive dance version. After all, we just got a tax cut passed by Congress through a sequence of events that bears very little resemblance to the neat diagram of How a Bill Becomes A Law from 7th grade civics. Put people and politics in a system, and everything goes to pieces….