When companies are looking to streamline services to drive more profit and growth, it's the bells and whistles -- those inessential add-ons that can potentially attract and retain choice-hungry consumers -- that are often the first elements to go. But Eric Clemons, Wharton professor operations and information management, is not so sure they are expendable in all cases. On a recent Delta Air Lines flight to Panama, Clemons was upgraded to first class. Once seated, he was surprised to discover the flight attendants in the first-class cabin didn't speak Spanish. So it fell upon Clemons -- and his rudimentary "Mexican-restaurant" Spanish skills -- to translate his fellow passengers' requests for dinner or to explain for the flight attendant that the airline didn't have pillows or blankets in first class on an international flight. "What do you think is going to happen? Of course they are in bankruptcy," says Clemons. The problem, he says, is not the bells and whistles themselves -- it's the way the company is going about solving the problem of complexity in its service offerings. "Solving complexity doesn't mean [eliminating] bells and whistles -- it means giving the customer a reason to buy your product."
Understanding complexity in an organization, especially for those in a service business, can become an exasperating experience. While companies increasingly respond to the need to streamline to drive profit and growth, they position themselves to deliver complexity wherever they find it is justifiable. According to experts at Wharton and George Group Consulting, an operations and strategy consultancy, service companies such as banks or airlines are closer to their customers than their counterparts in the manufacturing industry, which can be beneficial, but they may be too close for comfort. In fact, they could actually be smothering both themselves and their customers with dispensable or outdated offerings, made worse by overburdened internal processes that ultimately hurt the essential elements of survival -- customer service and satisfaction.
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