No one likes to wait. It’s an infringement on our personal use of time. We could always be doing something else, something more important, something more fun than waiting. Waiting strikes a very personal chord.
So, when does it make sense to add one more...?
Barista
Sales Clerk
Call Center Operator
Teacher
Bank Teller
Engineer
There’s a fair amount of research and science behind the systems we’ve created to minimize waiting. Even if economics was incidental, only so many people can be enlisted for any particular task due to physical, skill and mental constraints. But, machines and processes can be engineered to solve for some of the variables otherwise bound by human limitations...speed, time and specification. We can use machines to make things more quickly and more accurately. Slowly, but surely, we’ve replaced people with bits, bytes, robots and systems. In the process, we’ve also changed the tolerance by those being served. We tolerate not being looked in the eye, greeted warmly on the telephone and having someone care enough to solve our particular problem right away. We’ve traded personal for immediate, cheaper and sometimes more reliable.
But, at some point, somewhere in the system, a human needs to decide. Someone needs to choose which variable to solve for. Someone needs to handle the unique problem which has escalated beyond the front line system. Someone with the skills of generosity, empathy and the goal of building trust needs to show up...because at some point it always becomes personal. And it’s virtually impossible to engineer our way around it.
Our patience changes, just like our mood and affinity for fashion. One person’s idea of an acceptable time to wait is often not for the person next to them. It’s unique to our mood, our circumstances and what we believe to be the right thing.
The important work is to make things personal at just the right moment...to delight someone. This requires more than engineering. It requires leadership, and all the skills most engineering tries to avoid.
We need good engineering. But we also need the art of making things personal. Because ultimately we are humans serving humans.