People-focused knowledge management

Sensemaking
The team pinpointed several issues:
Issue 1. Asterix customer support representatives (CSRs) did not
give customers the impression of being motivated and competi-
tively responsive. Many were late in returning calls and in
responding to requests. Most CSRs were not proactive and
would often wait to do something until problems became criti-
cal — even when they had known about them for some time.
Issue 2. The Marketing Department and the sales staff and their
managers appeared to be convinced that Asterix was ahead of
its competition. They also seemed to think that they knew most
things better than their customers. They had become somewhat
aloof and difficult to deal with.
Issue 3. Asterix clearly had worked hard to innovate, but mostly
by focusing on perfecting existing features except when respond-
ing to customer requests. Many competitors, including the two
that had won the large sales, had introduced radically new fea-
tures that no customers had requested from Asterix.
Issue 4. Some new features were difficult to use and had quality
problems. They appeared to be designed by sophisticated engi-
neers who had their own ideas about how the features should
be implemented instead of working closely with customer
drivers.
Issue 5. Customers estimated the life-cycle costs of Asterix’s trucks
to be higher than those of most competitors, even though both
acquisition costs and fuel consumption were lower.
156
People-Focused Knowledge Management
ch06.qxd 5/3/04 2:34 PM Page 156

---

When Ken Haas and his executive vice presidents were presented
with the findings, they were dismayed. Initially, they did not believe
that the situation could be that bad and that widespread. A heated
discussion followed, but the evidence was compelling. There also 
had been earlier indications of similar problems, but they had been
ignored. It was clear that Asterix had been complacent and had
pursued a business-as-usual approach that now was resulting in 
problems.