Sometimes, customer issues or complaints get tagged as “resolved” without actually resolving them from the customer’s perspective. At times, the customer doesn’t even know that their complaint has been tagged as resolved because no one from the company told them. Often, this happens because someone in the company wants to make some interdepartmental performance chart look good.
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This can be dangerously misleading, because the business leader or senior management do not see the real picture as to how many customer issues or complaints were genuinely resolved on time, how many were resolved late, how many still remain unresolved, and how old the unresolved ones are. If management doesn’t have this information, it obviously won’t be a focus area for your company. Because these “early warning signals” remain hidden, you may only learn about the problems when it manifests itself in the form of more serious outcomes, such as customers and business leaving you. By then, it may be too late—or definitely much more difficult—to reverse the situation.
This two-part article recounts a real-life example, and the lessons learned from it, that might be relevant to your business.
A sales-agent phoned the call-center of a large company that she sold for. She had not received her commission for the last month. “We’re sorry about this ma’am, we will surely look into this and get back to you,” said the call-center executive. The executive created a service request in the company’s customer relationship management (CRM) system and entered the agent’s complaint.
Three weeks later, this complaint happened to get picked as part of a random sample audit of the complaint-resolution process. The status of the complaint was tagged as resolved and closed in the CRM system. The resolution comment against this complaint in the CRM said, “Commission dispatched, hence the complaint is closed.” The comment had been entered by Linus from finance who was responsible for commission payments.
Dev, the auditor, phoned the agent just to confirm if she had received her commission. “No, I’m still waiting.” The agent’s voice barely hid a trace of irritation.
Rather perplexed, Dev went back to finance. “Hey, Linus, why did you say ‘resolved’ in the CRM when the agent says she hasn’t got the money?” Linus gave Dev a funny look, “My friend, our job in finance is to dispatch the commission. Don’t tell me you expect me to call every agent and ask them if they got their money. I’ve done my job. Don’t you know our commission process runs at Six Sigma efficiency?”
As per the company’s practice, commission was calculated centrally at the head office and checks dispatched to each branch-office (the company has more than a thousand branch-offices). An operations person at the branch would hand over the check to agents attached to their branch.
Dev was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. He phoned the branch manager. The branch manager said, “I doubt if we’ve received the agent’s check. Are you sure finance sent it? They never send the commission checks on time, and then blame us when agents get their money late.”
When Linus heard the branch manager’s accusation, he was livid. “If you don’t believe me, I’ll show you the proof of dispatch.” Next morning, Linus showed Dev an airway bill from the courier company, which was proof that the courier had picked it up from finance. Linus had spent half a day digging up the proof.
Dev persisted, “But the agent is complaining that she didn’t receive the money, not that you haven’t dispatched it. I agree you have proof that it has been dispatched, but what if somehow it hasn’t reached her?” It was like talking to a wall. Linus showed Dev the commission process document, “Here, look at the process document. It says that the last step is to dispatch the commission, and I have done that. I have followed the process to a T. I can’t be responsible for things that are outside my process!”
Dev’s head was reeling. He decided to wait for a couple of days. Perhaps the agent might receive it by then. Two days later, he called the agent again. The agent again denied having received the commission. “Are you sure ma’am? I have seen the proof of dispatch myself,” Dev asked. Now the agent sounded somewhat annoyed, “Why don’t you ask your own colleagues who claims they gave me the money? I wish you people could just pay me my money that was due weeks ago, instead of calling me again and again. It also seems to me that people in your company don’t talk to each other.”
Dev went back to Linus. Now that Linus had proof that he had dispatched the commission, he had covered himself and refused to spend any more time talking about the agent’s problem. However, he was determined to get even with the branch manager. He passed the buck right back. “Dev, didn’t I show you the proof of delivery? If you’ve got nothing better to do, why don’t you ask the branch what they did with the commission check? I’m sure they’re sitting on it.”
Dev called the branch manager again. “Dev, this is a complete waste of our time. You have no idea how busy we are at the branch. But since you insist, I’ll have somebody check and get back to you.”
When no one called for two days, Dev called the branch again. This time, the branch manager’s tone was a tad softer. “Sorry, we did receive the check. It’s in my safe. Don’t worry, we’ll give it to her next time she comes to the branch.”
When Linus learned this, he confronted Dev, “See? I told you we had dispatched it. Obviously, the complaint is resolved. As far as finance is concerned, we are running at Six Sigma efficiency and we cannot let the branch people’s inefficiency spoil our measurement.” The minor detail that the agent hadn’t got the money in her hands seemed irrelevant to Linus. What mattered to him was to make his charts look good. But Dev decided to deal with Linus later. He had another question for the branch manager, “But why haven’t you given the money to the agent? She’s been complaining and seems quite upset.”
“She complained? Why didn’t anybody tell me that?” asked the branch manager. “Anyway, what’s there to complain about? My operations person just forgot to give it to her. Her money is safe with us!”
Dev called the agent. “Ma’am your complaint is resolved. We found your money. Your check was written long ago. It’s lying safe with the branch. They just forgot to give it to you.” Dev thought she would be relieved. However, this time, her irritation seemed mixed with amusement. “Son, do you think it makes a grain of difference to me whether the check is made or not, or if it’s lying at your head office or at the branch? And, what do you mean my complaint is ‘resolved?’ All that matters to me is that I haven’t got my money in my hands. I should have gotten it weeks ago. To me, my complaint will be resolved only when I get my money in my hands.”
When Dev got back his composure (and this took some time), he realized that this agent had just taught the company the most important lesson that anybody in the company had ever learned. Clearly, the agent couldn’t care less about the process followed by the company or what anybody in the company said about where the check was at. The only thing that mattered to her was if she had her money in her hands. To make matters worse, somebody in the company had tagged her complaint as resolved while she was yet to even hear from the company about her complaint. How could anybody call her complaint resolved unless she, the complainant, told them that it was resolved?
It struck Dev that what was really missing was closing the loop with the customer—the person who complained. The company had tagged the complaint as resolved without actually resolving it from the customer’s perspective, and without even bothering to check with the person who had complained. Was this because the person (or department) who tagged the complaint as resolved was not responsible for the end-delivery to the agent? The job of finance, after all, was merely to send the commission to the branch-office. It was the branch that was responsible to actually hand it over to the agent.
Should the company then put the responsibility to tag such complaints as resolved onto the branch managers instead of finance?
“I am willing to take the responsibility, provided my TAT (turn-around time) starts when the branch receives the checks. Obviously, cases where finance delays sending the commission can’t show as open complaints against me. After all, that’s not my fault,” said the branch manager. So here was a new challenge. While finance was unwilling to own the problem once the commission had left their hands, the branch was unwilling to own until it had reached the branch. No one in the company was looking at it end to end. But end to end was the only way that the customer looked at it. To her, nothing else mattered.
Having spoken to the customer and heard her point of view, the absurdity of it all struck Dev. Everybody in the company was working hard to make their measures look good (and in the process, tagging unresolved complaints as resolved), while none of this added any value to actually resolving the problem from the customer’s point of view.
Dev continued to think. Could it be possible that many more “commission not received” complaints from other agents were similarly tagged as resolved in the company’s CRM system without actually resolving them? And could other types of complaints from end-customers or agents also be meeting with the same fate? Dev sank into a sofa under the weight of his thoughts.
During the next few days, Dev did a quick sample audit of other common types of complaints received by the company. The audit itself was simple enough—all Dev needed to do was pick a random sample from each type of complaint that was tagged as resolved and ask the complainant to confirm if their complaint was truly resolved.
The audit confirmed Dev’s fears. In a large proportion of every type of complaint, the customer who had made the complaint denied having received any resolution. They said that they were still waiting for the resolution and plainly, many of them were angry that it was taking the company so long to resolve their complaint. And, mind you, we are only talking of complaints tagged as resolved.
Dev found another fishy practice. It was bad enough that a large number of complaints were tagged as resolved without actually resolving them. There was another bunch of complaints that were tagged as rejected. On probing these, Dev found that these were cases where, in the opinion of somebody in the company, what the customer was asking for was not doable, e.g., an insurance claim which is genuinely not payable due to the terms of the insurance policy.
Dev spoke to a few customers whose requests or complaints had been rejected more than a month ago. Each of them said that they had not heard anything from the company and were awaiting a resolution or at least a response. Dev told these customers that what they were asking for was not doable and explained the reasons. Dev did this with some trepidation, expecting the customers to get mad at him. But he was pleasantly surprised to find that most customers were quite understanding when the facts were honestly explained to them. Several of them actually said they appreciated that the company was at least taking the trouble to talk to them and close the loop—even if their request could not be met.
The meeting with the CEO
Dev sought a meeting with Amla, the CEO. “You’ll have to make it quick, Dev. I have an important meeting with our sales heads. We’re losing customers and market share, you see, and I need to plan our strategy to counter this.”
Dev began, “That’s interesting, Amla, and I believe I have part of the answer to why we’re losing market share.” And Dev went on to fill the CEO in on what his audits and conversations with customers had revealed. He also told Amla about the resolved and rejected complaints in the CRM system.
Dev concluded, “So, I’m afraid the charts you have been shown month after month showing certain processes running at near Six Sigma efficiency and on the number of customer complaints and the percent of complaints resolved within time have very little to do with reality. Most of these charts are merely someone in the company telling us that they, or their department, have done their part. All the individual charts look good, but nobody is telling you what the customers are saying.”
Amla listened intently to what Dev said. He seemed to be lost in thought for several moments even after Dev had stopped speaking. When he spoke, it was evident that what he had heard had shaken him. “This is an eye-opener, Dev! No wonder our customers are leaving us in droves. I’m still going to have that meeting on why we’re losing market share. But in addition to the sales heads, I want you to be there. Also, call everyone else from the management team who has a role to play in resolving issues commonly raised by customers or agents.”
The meeting on market share turned out to be a session led by Amla, in which he laid down what he called the “commandments” for dealing with any problem brought by customers or agents. The commandments were based on the lessons learned from the story so far about the agent’s complaint.
The commandments would be relevant in almost any business in any industry, and form the subject of part two of this article.
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