Accountability – who’s responsible for it?

As I sat on a train heading out of London Waterloo today I knew we were in for few problems with emergency engineering work on the line ahead and the departure boards looking decidedly void of useful information. Past the departure time the Guard announces that the train will not stop at 3 of the usual stations, including mine. As we hurry off the train clutching coats and laptops we meet the said Guard and naturally bombard him with questions. With a very uninterested look on his face he lifts his arms and answers “don’t know” to all the questions. “Go and ask someone” he says, pointing back to the harassed looking team on the station information desk.

You get the picture. Accountability is something we all need to take responsibility for. The customer experience we design, so carefully and at great cost, is not worth the investment of effort if it all falls apart when something goes wrong. When the areas of the business which cause the problems fail to learn from them, the frontline start to pass the blame. When the frontline pass the blame, the reputation of the whole organisation and trust of customers is damaged. In day to day operations, everyone needs to take a shared accountability for delivering the best customer experience whether things go right or wrong. But this will only happen if the business take accountability for fixing the root causes of problems.