Form 27B/6

The Air Conditioning Repair Scene.

Are process, procedures and polite indifference in the way of your customer, patient, and employee experiences? In many cases, there’s no doubt that they are.

The rules and regulations of Central Services isn’t an exaggeration. How many steps do your customers take before they actually get the attention or service they need? How does that polite robotic greeting of indifference make your customers feel?

The visit to the doctor, that phone call with your insurance company, stepping into any strip mall retailer, or just trying to cancel your streaming subscription is far more Kafkaesque than Sam Lowry’s journey.

The Air Conditioning Repair Scene is from the 1985 movie, Brazil. Directed by Terry Gilliam and written by Gilliam, Tom Stoddard, and Charles McKeown, Brazil is a brilliant critique of how systems, bureaucracy and process crush the human spirit under the illusion of order and efficiency.

Spoor and Dowser (Bob Hoskins and Derrick O’Connor) show up to fix Sam Lowry’s (Jonathan Pryce) broken air conditioner with paperwork, procedures, smiling incompetence, and blind adherence to process. Harry Tuttle, the rogue heating engineer, played by Robert De Niro, (armed and hidden in the dark) brings a wrench, purpose and heart, and gets the job done. This should be painfully familiar today, in a world where systems matter more than solutions, when compliance replaces care, and apathy is behind every polite, “How may I help you?”, the customer loses.

Every brand, every company, and their consultants and design agencies need to put the experience first, before any system, technology or feigned critical procedure. If not, you’ll never create moments that matter to your customers, your patients, or your employees.

Watch Brazil if you haven’t, and rewatch it if it’s been years. It is quite fabulous.

Fly Sam fly!