How to Catch Bad Supervisors and Staff

Oh joy, just had another Home Depot delivery that didn’t confirm the appointment the night before. If this were just a one-time thing, I could take it with chagrin. Unfortunately, these types of mistakes happen all the time in big companies but why are they so prevalent? Part of the answer lies in the fact there is little accountability. In theory, supervisors are supposed to monitor systems and ensure everyone is doing their job. However, when the supervisor or IT has too much power and can override the system, that person can bypass proper accountability.

In the case of Comcast, on several occasions someone changed my appointments to different days without my authorization. Even worse, the company also failed on another incident to have a supervisor call me back relating to a problem that the technicians could not resolve. Suspiciously, each time a technician flagged the recurring problem as requiring senior support to callback, the log entry mysteriously disappeared from their system. Only someone with the highest level access should have this ability but apparently it was no trouble for the culprit(s).

So how do you actually stop abuse like this? Surveillance cameras can be helpful but they cannot stop more witty managers that know how to cover their tracks by manipulating the system. A better way would be to provide an option in the voicemail or at least online portal that allows customers to directly report suspicious behavior in the company without having to depend on customer support to log incidents. The complaints would then be reviewed preferably by a non-biased third party and the database would also have triggers to prevent hard deletes and record changes without full audit trail logging. This may sound extreme but big companies provide too much cover for senior staff and unless there is an easy way to get around them, some abuse will be impossible to stop. 

At OfficeSalesUSA.com, a transaction log records any changes made by staff to orders. Moreover, voicemail contains only one menu and is easy to navigate. All callbacks are made promptly and most incidents are resolved in a matter of minutes rather than hours let alone days or weeks. Maybe not all companies can streamline their support and order tracking this well but no customer should ever have to weed through several levels of voicemail all to be disconnected by a wiseguy that knows he can get away with it.