Output or outcome?

A very simple question, commonly heard words too. But how about the difference(s,) is it that simple and common also to hear, know and more over utilize the knowledge in our daily routines?

Let's avoid what business dictionary or thesaurus might say about it. Simply we can define the difference as follow:

• Output is what pops out at the end of a process, (e.g number of socialization conducted)
• Outcome is level of performance, achievements (e.g level of the socialization affecting).

Now, let's take a look at our beloved 'second home', the Directorate General of Taxes. Now we have our 'complaint center' called "Kring Pajak : (021) 500200". We'd say this is good, I agree. This is our output, from none to existence. But how efective this complaint center from taxpayer's perspective? (let's not  rushed ourselves to answer this :-) )This is outcome.

You might say, complaint center's outcome has nothing to do with DGT's goal!s! Well, you thought wrong buddy... let's be logic on this, our institution has built this facility which cost us a lot of money, and yet we would questioning this as 'something that has nothing to do with DGT's goals'? Watch it....

And also, consider this survey fact :

• 96% of customers who are dissatisfied, won;t complain.
• 90% of those customers won't come back.
• each of them will tell a minimum 9 to as many as 20 other people about his experiences.

Let's imagine, we provided services to 1000 taxpayers, 100 of them are dissatisfied but only 96 of them use the "Kring Pajak : (021) 500200" facility. 87 of them won't come back (we can ignore this to the difference kind of 'service' we provided), and the worst of it is that 783 people may have the same perspective even though they've not experienced it yet!! That's why you might find your own uncle told you that you're ignorance just because he heard something from one of those 87 dissatisfied taxpayers.

Ok, since we're governmental officers I would not expect you to accept this marketing idea too soon. Never mind, just think about it. One more thing which is more important for us. How would I know (i.e guess) that the Kring Pajak : (021) 500200 is an output measured-facility rather than outcome measured-facility?

The answer is "I don't". On the contrary, we can see that the Kring Pajak : (021) 500200 outcome is one of the contracted indexes to the Echelon II officials, so based on the last strategic planning cascading documents this facility is already on the "right" track. And hopfuly I will write a better development on this matter after my first data collecting visit there since I'm expecting then will already be an evaluation conducted.

Tokyo, October 3, 2009.

A small tribute to my beloved wife, and passionate struggling buddies at PKB Jaksel.