Consumer Championing and the System Corruption

A certain daily paper has a regular column called Consumer Champions, dedicated to asserting consumer rights and helping resolve issues with companies and services. It receives letters from the readers and champions their causes by helping navigate the way around bureaucratic obstacles that companies or authorities throw in their path.

But, what lies under the veneer of a positive mechanism for righting wrongs? A systems thinker would be able to intuitively cut through the layers of complexity and come up with something similar to this.

The motivation of a company to have processes that systematically wrong their customers is the one of a strategy for profitability optimisation. It's a part of their business model and represents a systems corruption that has become normative in our society. All the safeguards and the legislation around the way companies should deal with their customers is largely represented by the "interfaces without implementation" ( https://www.linkedin.com/posts/martin-wollny-068389_systems-systemsthinking-systemscorruption-activity-7219298857124331520-E-Ow?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop).

The motivation of the paper to pursue small man's causes is the one of opportunism. It appears that they are trying to empower and inform consumers and hold companies accountable for their actions. It may seem that the stories are there to inspire others to take action and seek redress for problems them might encounter. But, are they looking for a systemic change? Of course they are not, that would rid them of an occasion to position themselves as a power broker and the champion of their readers. They'd lose the benefit of having a regular column and the positive engagement that translate into commercial and political gains.

Back to the letters. Every exposed instance of injustice opens a limited window of opportunity for the media to create content that is commercially sound and socially positive. But they are not a Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the exploited poor. It's a symbiotic relationships between the parties, both happy to engage in a limited way and project the illusion that the system is not hopelessly corrupt.

Carefully worded editorial ensures that the corruption of the system is whitewashed and buried - only a gentle rebuke along the lines of process deficiencies or capacity issues are usually raised.

From the provider - usually a flurry of apologies to the effect that it's an isolated incident and a prompt re-imbursement or compensation - the problem resolved and the impression it was a genuine misunderstanding customers couldn't resolve themselves due to the communication breakdown. Thankfully, there's a mechanism (the newspaper, rather than the ombudsman) that can find the common language and bridge the gap between the provider and the customer.

Now, a limited aspect of this is what makes it possible. A newspaper can only publish a single article every few days, but probably receives hundreds of letters from wronged readers. The effort on the side of the magazine needed to jump the hoops and get to the person who can actually resolve the problem is not insignificant. So, this becomes a joint entreprise - the company happily writes off one of its cons in order to get a positive publicity and a gentle treatment and the magazine notches another victory. Obviously, they only publish stories that resulted in successful outcome.

Is this a justice lottery then? A thumbs up to spare a life? Mere entertainment? That's probably another subject altogether. Back to the story.

How is it possible that newspaper staff can get the job done and resolve customer/consumer problems that were otherwise stuck in the system?

In my previous article I talked about interfaces without implementation ( https://www.linkedin.com/posts/martin-wollny-068389_systems-systemsthinking-systemscorruption-activity-7219298857124331520-E-Ow?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop) - which represent explicitly stated execution paths for navigating a system. They are a high level process maps or flow diagrams and we broadly understand systems by imagining that behind each of these process nodes there's a functionality that gives you a deterministic outcome. What I'm finding is that in most cases there's nothing tangible, functional or reliable behind these interfaces. It's similar to having windows all around the house, boarded with shutters and you imagine that they open to the views. As and when you get to finally open them - you find out they are all bricked up.

So, are the journalists using the same non-existent or broken interfaces or are they somehow tapping into a parallel world of hidden interfaces that actually work?

Yep, we're already in that new territory, a parallel reality where things are possible.

What really needs doing is analysing system corruption and devising a common language around it. We need a testing rig capable of probing those interfaces and modelling various execution paths, like a hacker probes vulnerabilities of computer systems. Then we need a framework that deals with system corruptions - accountable nodes that deal with feedbacks and fix the leaky systems. Let's talk!