In “Close the Loop with the Customer, Part One,” we left off with Amla, the CEO of a large company, laying down what he called “commandments” for dealing with any problem brought by customers or agents. The commandments are based on lessons learned from an agent’s complaint for not receiving her sales commission but are relevant in almost any business in any industry.

Recount and reasons

To recount, the company was losing customers in droves. An auditor in the company, Dev, discovered one reason was because issues were being obscured by performance charts and documentation of taken procedures indicating that processes were working and departments were running at Six Sigma efficiency. Everyone was working hard to make their measures look good, but most of the charts merely conveyed that an individual or her department had done their parts.

This can be dangerously misleading because senior management doesn’t get to know the real picture. If you don’t get to know this, obviously this can’t be a focus area for your company.

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