“You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.”
Robert A Heinlein — “Logic of Empire”
The day has finally arrived where Lowe’s will make an another attempt at delivering a new and hopefully functioning refrigerator after a truly epic service failure on Saturday afternoon.
That failure included a general contractor who has done far more work on this house than anyone else kindly coming down the hill and proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that the installation technician had failed to close the valve prior to disconnecting the water line to the refrigerator that is leaving us.
He and I had made it about as plain as humanly possible to the two people in their offshore call centre that Lowe’s needed to do a couple of things differently by the time today came round:
- The crew that comes this time to install the refrigerator actually needs to know what they’re doing and definitely needs to not be the same person who failed so spectacularly the first time.
- They really need to ensure that the warehouse prioritise this delivery for the four hour window in the morning from 0800-1200 (so that my daughter may be safely delivered to work on time).
The jury is still out on point one because as of this writing, of course Lowe’s warehouse picked the most inconvenient delivery window possible of 1200-1600.
Please forgive me for wondering if by the end of the day, Lowe’s “customer support” will have completely ignored every suggestion they were given on Saturday seemingly out of spite and intentionally.
It’s times like those that I have to consciously try to remember Hanlon’s Razor which I first encountered from Barbara Nowell (a cherished manager of mine many years ago) when she gave a young employee that was prone to quick anger very valuable advice that they’ve never forgotten since: “never ascribe to malice that which can be easily explained by stupidity!”
In fairness, I understand completely that what passes for the IT back-end at Lowe’s puts all of the deliveries set for a day in the area into the blender and theoretically plots the most optimal itinerary for the trucks they’re rolling out that day and that they’ve likely got hundreds of deliveries or more in the Raleigh-Durham area.
However, if we were to take the salesperson at the store and call centre people at face value, no one seems to have any control over this system whatsoever and I guess whatever scheduling the computer barfs out has to be accepted without any human input or modification in exigent circumstances.
Like for example when this particular delivery is actually a *SECOND ATTEMPT* for a delivery that shouldn’t have failed the first time had the valve at the refrigerator water supply spigot been turned off by a presumed professional installation technician!
And the way it seems to behave seems to be straight-up FIFO (first-in, first-out) based on when the appointment request hits the system which is fine if you’re queuing for concert tickets but delivery logistics require far more complex and nuanced solutions.
So you’re left to wonder where in the 0800-2000 period of time your four-hour installation window is going to be stuck until about 1800 hours the night prior when there’s really nothing you can do about it.
So even though technology has improved dramatically in the decades since I started designing database systems, most places doing installations and deliveries are still inconveniencing their customers because even though the window gets narrowed to four hours, you’ve pretty much lost any chance of recovering the other eight hours of the day for other tasks.
I genuinely wonder how they’d feel if they invited someone over to their home for dinner or a social engagement at a specific time only to be told by the guest that they’ll turn up at some completely random time in a four-hour window and expect the host to just deal with it. I’m betting the first time someone pulls that stunt will be the last time they’re ever invited to come round!
It seems to me that it wouldn’t take much to make the scheduling system far more useful and intelligent to at least allow whoever is putting in the appointment to help the system in choosing the four hour appointment window that works best for the customer…be it morning (0800-1200), afternoon (1200-1600), or evening (1600-2000) and have the system strongly consider that factor when determining which block the delivery will occur ahead of only considering what is most expedient for Lowe’s.
Unless the programme and heuristics used by the system are truly evil and designed to punish the customer intentionally, it should be able to grant the customer’s preferred time slot at least 75% (and preferably well above 90%!) of the time.
But there still needs to be a mechanism by which the system can be overridden when the business needs it to deal with exceptional circumstances as they occur because anyone who has ever had any significant amount of time working logistics or dispatching knows, there’s only one overriding rule governing the whole activity…the one from dear Comrade Murphy.
Actually making the delivery scheduling system as convenient as possible for the customer!
It’s an idea that is so crazy it just might work.