Telstra has kicked off a restructure what has been described as be the most comprehensive since the company was privatized. Called “Project New”, the Telco has in the order of 500 people working on 27 sub-projects, with one of these sub-projects already claiming the jobs of around 350 senior managers in the last two months.

On the surface, some of the early messages seem to be aligned to the success of customers; “The restructure aimed to simplify Telstra's internal business processes and improve to the way it approaches - and delivers - customer service”. Simplification is one of the keys to delivering customer success, remove the causes of work and make every customer interaction a successful one. Unfortunately, this is what follows and it shows the old Inside Out thinking as it talks about “a view to cutting underlying fixed costs and becoming more competitive.”

Perhaps Telstra should learn from the thinking and experiences of some of this century's most successful companies. Apple has become the leader in the mobile device space despite Nokias long standing dominance in the market. Nokia still maintains the stance that it has the best technology and perhaps this is correct but dominance is no longer achieved simply through technology. McDonalds has been the leader in the fast food industry for decades yet their profits started to decline when their goal was to have the most franchises. Around 2003, they turned their focus to delivering what customers needed. The secret behind the success of these, and many other of this centuries most successful companies is the adoption of an Outside In strategy.
 
One of the Telstra sources was even quoted as saying "examining its organizational structure" as part of its move to a leaner operating model.” And Telstra don’t appear to be trying to change customer expectations very far judging by this statement ” Telstra had been testing the network and customer services provided by its competitors - going as far as buying their products and "lodging complaints and seeing what they do" about them.” Perhaps the fate of Telstra will be similar to that of Toyota if it adopts the same process improvement methodology. The demise of Toyota is perhaps attributable to its shift away from delivering what customers want to a desire to become the largest card manufacturer, classic inside out thinking.

Looking further we see another aim to be an increase in the number and percentage of sales and customer service interactions are through online and self-serve channels from a current level of 10%. So, instead of allowing customers to get frustrated with their automated voice system before eventually being able to speak with a real person, Project New will encourage people to get lost in a tangled web of poorly designed internet systems designed by online marketers. Telstra New should take a leaf out of Zappos experience and put their customer support number on every page of their website and encourage people to talk to a real person and empower the customer service representative to fix the customer’s problem.

In fact, I wonder how many of the 500 people and 27 projects are really dedicated to improving customer satisfaction, fixing the causes of work, eliminating moments of truth. How much of Project New is really about aligning the company to deliver successful customer outcomes and how much of it is merely about delivering the same old poor service at less cost; effectively shifting the deck chairs on the titanic?