We can see that in telco, banks, etc. When you need help, there will always be that many level of “stages” that you need to go through. But when they need your help, such as pushing a credit card to you, they will remove all those “stages” in order to reach you easily.

Actually companies do know the problem and they also know the solution. So why aren’t they rushing to fix it? Because in some cases, the benefits of inefficiency far outweigh efficiency.

If you’ve looked around, you’ll sometimes find an internal corporate ecosystem feeding off the wastage produced by inefficiency. You bust that open and you might stand to lose tax benefits, supplier relationships, partner relationships, even client relationships. You could destabilize an inefficient-but-working service delivery mechanism. The question is often, how do you cure the cancer without killing the patient. It can be very hard to do depending on what’s at stake.

So I’ve learnt that not all companies want efficiency, especially established companies who think they are too large to fail. These companies often count on the probability that for every fussy customer like you and me, there are thousands who just shrug and keep their silence. They know that other companies might actually be worse and that eventually you’ll come back to them.

It seems to be the reality of business in a lot of places.