Is this 'good' customer service?

This is a true story.

On a hot day, I put money into a vending machine to get a drink. The machine accepted my money, but no product was dispensed. As I was thinking about what to do next, I noticed an 800 number to call for 'customer service and complaints'.

Curious to see how they would respond, I called the number and was greeted by a very polite voice that sincerely apologized and offered to send me a coupon to cover me for my loss. After taking down my name and address, the voice again apologized for the inconvenience and hung up.

But the voice did not ask for the location of the vending machine!

I will eventually get the coupon in the mail, but two problems still remained:

• The company will continue to pile up unhappy customers. Until the problem is fixed, customers will continue to insert cash and not get a drink. Since the company had no idea where the broken vending machine is, who knows when the problem will be fixed!
• I was still thirsty and still had to figure out how to get a drink.

How badly does your organization's strategy execution misfire due to the lack of a simple closed loop process? How many opportunities for innovation are being missed because these incidents are not tracked and analyzed? Is your organization being blindsided by having a visible process that looks good but does not really fix the problem?