Covid-19 has no doubt impacted businesses in lasting ways. While some businesses were shut down, a lot of businesses had to reduce capacity and operational limits, and shift operations to remote overnight. As a result, it is understandable that businesses had to prioritize available customer service resources to focus on critical tasks, and de-prioritize other non-essential services. What is not understandable is that close to two years in to the pandemic, when businesses should have had ample time to stabilize their operations, customer service still sucks. To the extent that I dread calling any contact center helplines, and now prefer emails (even when they are slower), to at least save myself the annoyance and frustration of dealing with customer service. Here are some recent examples that I had to deal with: Call with an airline to change credit of miles from one airline program to another: Spent one and a half hour on hold, without talking to a human. I wasn't sure how much lo...
Growing up within a consulting firm which is known for its risk management practices, I have come to know myself as a risk-averse person. I mean I do enjoy the returns, but I also like to limit the risks that come along with them. Perhaps that’s why risk management as a concept seems like an obvious extrapolation of my own outlook. So I did surprise myself when I said yes to going for a two-week safari trip to Africa. What could possibly go wrong (besides being mauled by a lion or falling in a lake full of hippos or contracting a life threatening disease)? They say in order to escape a lion, all you need to do is to not be the slowest runner in the group. So as part of my risk mitigation measure, I picked a group of four (three of whom were from Oliver Wyman, by the way) in which I was one of the faster runners. And that is how I agreed to this trip to Kenya. Our group in Kenya We covered a lot of ground in those 2 weeks – started off with a few days in Samburu National Rese...