So it's our fault is it?

I often walk down to the Post Officer rather than slap a stamp on a package and post it, because I can never be quite sure that I've got the right postage amount. So I spend a long time standing queues - there's always a queue these days. And that gives me plenty of time to take in the message on the Post Officer poster that says: "4 out of 10 people use the wrong postal service from our range."

Can you believe it? A business has got it so wrong that 40% of its customers are buying the wrong product. Now whose fault is that? Not the customers for a start.

I have tried very hard to keep up with the ever changing services - first and second, large and small, different widths and different sizes, different weights. I'm sure I get it wrong - I'm sure I'm part of that 40%.

Now if 40% of my customers were buying the wrong product for their purposes, would I broadcast the fact to them? Would I slap them in the face with the knowledge that I'm so incompetent I've made my offering so complex that they can't understand it?

Of course not. The idea is ludicrous. I would quietly, with as little fuss as possible, revise my offering to make it perfectly simple and easy the use. I wouldn't just carry on and blame my customers instead.

So come on Royal Mail - I know you're reading this, or you certainly should be if your online monitoring is adequate. Don't blame nearly half your customers for your own inadequacies. Look to your business model, sort it out and then perhaps the queues will be a great deal shorter.

Bonus bluffs

A couple of years ago it would have been too far fetched for a movie or a novel.

Executives in a Very Large Organisation bring it to its insolvent knees. It’s baled out by A Third Party and then the executives say to that Third Party: “Pay us obscene bonuses or we’ll leave”.

Leave, say I! Do we really need to keep in post bank employees who have done such a bad job that without public money baling them out they wouldn’t even have a job? I think not.