I read a LinkedIn post about someone’s experience with roadside assistance, insurance, and a premium car brand. A car insured in the Netherlands, a problem abroad, a missed client appointment in Alicante, hours of waiting, companies pointing at one another, and ultimately the feeling that nobody was really taking hold of the problem.
For me, that points to a much bigger issue.
In many organizations, we’ve done something strange with costs, time, and KPIs. Of course you need to manage costs. Of course you need to know where time goes. Of course you need to understand profitability. A business isn’t a charity, and “just always provide extra service” isn’t a mature operating model either.
But somewhere along the way, many businesses have tipped the balance too far.
Every minute needs justification. Every action must fall within scope. Every exception first has to pass through a process, a contract, an SLA, or a manager. Before you know it, nobody is asking: what does this customer actually need right now?
That’s where things go wrong.
Not because KPIs are bad. KPIs aren’t the problem. Bad KPIs are. Or more precisely: KPIs that make sense locally but are destructive across the entire chain.
The dealership looks at its responsibility. The insurer looks at the policy. The assistance center looks at the protocol. The towing partner looks at availability. The back office looks at costs. Everyone may be doing their own part perfectly. But the customer is still stranded at the roadside.
That isn’t a service problem. It’s an ownership problem.
And it isn’t limited to automotive. You see it in IT, finance, telecom, government, healthcare, professional services, and pretty much anywhere processes have become more important than outcomes.
- A ticket has been handled, but the problem hasn’t been solved.
- An SLA has been met, but the customer is unhappy.
- A handoff has happened, but nobody feels responsible.
- A process has been followed, but the outcome is worthless.
Everything looks fine on paper. In practice, the system fails.
For me, that connects to the familiar idea of “billing every minute.” I understand where it comes from, especially in consulting, IT services, and project organizations. You sell time, expertise, and capacity. You want to know what’s billable and what isn’t. Makes sense.
But when billability becomes your main compass, strange behavior follows.
- Helping without a direct assignment becomes a “loss.”
- Thinking beyond the scope becomes “unprofitable.”
- Taking ownership becomes a “risk.”
- Referring the customer elsewhere becomes safer than solving the problem.
You can use all the beautiful words you like about customer focus, partnership, and being a trusted advisor, but your behavior tells a different story.
Customers can tell immediately whether you’re helping because you understand the problem or because there’s a line item attached.
The question isn’t whether you should control costs. Of course you should.
The real question is: where should you specifically avoid managing blindly by cost?
That’s where 80/20 comes in for me.
Not as a trick. Not as a management poster. As a practical way to make your operation more mature.
In almost every organization, a relatively small share of situations determines a large share of customer impact. Most customer interactions are standard. Fine. Handle those efficiently, predictably, and at scale. That’s exactly what processes are good for.
But there’s always a smaller category of situations with disproportionate amounts of trust, reputation, and risk at stake. A customer stranded abroad. An outage at an important business unit. A security report stuck between teams. A complaint from a customer who has already been referred elsewhere three times. An escalation where everyone is technically right but the customer still has no solution.
Those are the 20% of moments that determine 80% of the experience. That’s exactly where your organization needs to work differently.
Not everything needs white-glove service. That’s unaffordable and unnecessary. But you do need to know which moments are critical. Which moments make or break trust? Which cause the highest escalation costs? Which situations create the most reputational damage? Where does the greatest frustration arise because customers have to manage the chain themselves?
That’s where the real value lies.
In Lean terms: look at the value stream rather than the individual department.
Not: did each department perform its own task properly?
But: does the customer’s request flow toward a good outcome without unnecessary waiting, handoffs, corrections, and repetition?
That’s where many organizations fool themselves. They measure local efficiency, but not the flow of value.
- A service desk can forward a ticket correctly.
- A supplier can respond within the SLA.
- An insurer can say the policy terms were followed.
- A dealership can say it isn’t formally responsible.
- A back office can say the correct procedure was used.
All true. And the overall process can still be worthless.
Lean wouldn’t just ask who completed their task. It would ask where the waste is.
- Where is the waiting time?
- Where are the handoffs?
- Where does rework happen?
- Where is information requested again?
- Where does the customer have to call, email, explain, and chase?
- Where does nobody own the whole?
And perhaps most importantly: where does a problem grow because nobody has authority to solve it early enough?
That’s the real waste. Not someone spending an extra fifteen minutes on a customer. The waste is hours of waiting, calling three companies, missing client appointments, repairing escalations, limiting reputational damage, and explaining afterward why it all happened.
That’s often the flaw in “billing every minute.”
- You see the cost of those extra fifteen minutes immediately.
- But you often only see the cost of failing to take ownership later.
- The extra fifteen minutes appear on someone’s timesheet.
- The customer’s frustration isn’t neatly recorded anywhere.
- The customer’s missed appointment isn’t on your dashboard.
- The LinkedIn post about your failing service isn’t in your cost center.
Lost loyalty only appears later, when someone doesn’t come back.
So tightly managing time and costs seems rational. But sometimes it’s only rational within the wrong measurement model.
I see this constantly in IT.
Teams are judged on availability, lead times, ticket volumes, project budgets, or change windows. All useful. But if nobody is accountable for the actual business outcome, you get exactly the same runaround.
- Infrastructure says the network is available.
- The application manager says the application is running.
- The supplier says it’s within the SLA.
- Security says policy was applied correctly.
- The business says: “I still can’t do my job.”
Everyone is right within their own KPI. But the whole doesn’t work. That’s local optimization. Not customer value.
An incident process is a good Lean example. Many organizations measure how quickly tickets are created, assigned, and closed. But the value stream often tells a different story. A ticket waits three hours in a queue. Then gets routed incorrectly. Comes back with a question. Goes to a supplier. Comes back because information is missing. Gets reclassified. Then a scope discussion begins. Meanwhile, the user or customer hasn’t moved forward at all.
- Each handoff seems small. Together, they create the greatest waste.
- The solution isn’t making everyone work harder.
- The solution is improving the flow.
Make it clear who owns the entire chain. Give people authority to cross departmental boundaries in critical situations. Define when something is a “moment of truth.” Make sure the customer doesn’t become the project manager of your internal process. Measure not just ticket lead time, but customer impact, handoffs, reopened tickets, waiting time, and escalation quality.
Above all: don’t force the critical 20% of cases through the same standard process as the routine 80%.
That’s mature management.
- Standardize where possible. Escalate where necessary.
- Automate the predictable flow. Give people authority for the exceptions that matter.
- Use KPIs to learn, not to hide behind.
That doesn’t mean everything should be free. That’s too simplistic. There’s nothing wrong with clear agreements, commercial discipline, and healthy margins. In fact, you can’t provide good service without that foundation.
But there’s a difference between being cost-conscious and becoming value-poor.
- Cost-conscious means carefully assessing effort, capacity, and returns.
- Value-poor means only doing something if it’s immediately billable.
- That’s where many organizations lose their distinctive value.
The moments when you really build trust are rarely the easy ones. Not when everything goes according to plan. Not when the proposal has just been signed. Not when the invoice is paid on time.
Trust develops when something gets uncomfortable. When there’s pressure. When the problem falls just outside scope. When the customer risks falling between companies. When nobody formally owns the whole problem, but someone still says: “I’ll take this.”
- That’s premium.
- Not the most expensive car.
- Not the most beautiful website.
- Not the slickest promise in a sales deck.
Premium is operational behavior under pressure.
That behavior doesn’t happen by itself. You have to organize it. Give people authority. Design KPIs that reward ownership instead of punishing it. Make room for common sense. Accept that not every valuable action translates into revenue that same day.
The 80/20 question every organization should ask itself is therefore quite simple:
Which 20% of our customer moments generate 80% of the trust, frustration, escalations, or reputational damage?
Once you know, design your operation around them.
Not by making everything more expensive or complex. Quite the opposite. Lean isn’t about more hassle. It’s about less waste and more value.
- Remove unnecessary steps.
- Reduce handoffs.
- Make ownership explicit.
- Give people authority at critical customer moments.
- Measure outcomes, not just activity.
- Stop pretending “within SLA” means “well served.”
Because it doesn’t.
For me, that’s the real lesson from an experience like this.
Premium isn’t brand positioning. Premium is an operating model.
You can’t promise premium in your marketing and then run your operation as if every nonbillable minute is waste. Those two things clash. And customers notice exactly when it matters.
Organizations that understand this don’t win because they never make mistakes. They win because they take ownership when mistakes happen.
- They don’t make customers manage the chain.
- They don’t hide behind internal handoffs.
- They use KPIs as tools, not excuses.
- They understand that going an extra step sometimes isn’t a cost, but an investment in trust.
Ultimately, that’s simply hard business.
Because trust sells. Reputation sells. Reliability sells. The feeling that someone holds onto your problem until it’s solved sells.
Just not always within the same minute.
Originally published on LinkedIn. View all blog posts.