In the Digital Age where the continued investment of major capital has been focused on scalability, volume, and growth, the concept of customer service has become a second-tier element of delivering the value proposition to customers.

During the past year, our team of Business Acumen learning facilitators who have been delivering award-winning business acumen learning solutions to our large global clients have also taken notice of how perplexed participants have been when thinking and applying concepts of customer service when executing decisions in our business simulation workshops.  As recently as last week, I had a conversation with a team of mid-level leaders about their questions on customer service and one of them half-kiddingly asked me if customer service actually still impacted the simulation as a demand driver and if they should even bother investing any money into it.

I’ve noticed that a significant number of leaders are feeling more emotional and more frustrated than I can recall in the 25 plus years I’ve been providing business simulation-centric learning engagements.  An example of this type of emotional frustration is demonstrated by the following quote from an experienced leader working in a very tough business environment that has been created by increased price pressures, commoditization, and an internal hiring freeze at his company:

As part of the design and development process to build new Business Leadership simulations,  Advantexe conducts in-depth interviews with top global leaders about their challenges and opportunities for success.  Over the past few weeks, I’ve been very surprised by one consistent theme coming from research; a significant number of leaders are extremely “frustrated” that their direct reports and their direct reports’ direct reports don’t “get the strategy” and aren’t “aligned around the priorities," leaving a significant gap in the strategic execution. 

“I truly don’t get it.  We are so clear about our goals and what our strategy is, but it feels that many of our leaders develop acute amnesia about it and instead of leading and prioritizing, they are complaining that they don’t get enough direction.  I for one have had enough of that…”

Responsibility and accountability are much more than business leadership jargon; in some cases, they may mean life or death.  Last week, news came out that Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos - a one-time Silicon Valley darling of Wall Street - was charged with “massive fraud” by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for deceiving investors and lying about a “revolutionary technology” that would have disrupt the process of testing blood samples and changed the course of medicine for years to come.  As a direct result of the false claims and deception, the value of Theranos reached $9 billion in 2016 and Ms. Holmes owned more than half the shares of the company making her for the moment a very rich person.  Clearly, the seduction of fame, money, power, and everything else she was striving for superseded fundamental values of human decency, values, and business ethics.