Failure Demand

Failure Demand The concept of failure demand was first described by John Seddon in his book “I Want You to Cheat”, published in 1992. It was initially called “demand we don’t want” and later, after much careful thought, re-named “failure demand”.

It is demand caused by a failure to do something or do something right for the customer. Customers come back, making further demands, unnecessarily consuming the organisation’s resources because the service they receive is ineffective.

In conventional command-and-control customer service organisations, failure demand routinely runs at 40 – 60% of total customer demand. In some organisations, particularly health and social care and utilities, it can be as high as 80% or more. It is astonishing burden on capacity and an astonishing cost.