Story #23 "A Tale Of Corporate Miscommunication"

If you are reading this story, you are a decent enough English language reader. Perhaps even an impressive speaker too. But how often do you speak to communicate?

I have been asking this burning question to myself throughout my corporate life. And no louder than the time we encountered the bloody return issue. It was a couple of years ago in my previous organization, the largest BPO MNC in the world. We had a large American medical equipment manufacturer client which had its Customer Service operations set up at our Hyderabad center. It was my first account I took care of as the Process Excellence Six Sigma Black Belt role during my two year stint there. As my Training manager Sarah Elizabeth had commented the other day- it was my baptism by fire in this job.

One not so fine Monday evening, we switched on our laptops with an email directed to the whole operations leadership. We too were there with our Quality and Training teams, with not less than 50 other unknowns in CC. In a few minutes, there was pandemonium across the floor. Subject line of the email was "Bloody Return". To give you all a little context, Customer Service had email and telephone processes set up for the american customers- purchasing staff at large hospitals and medical centers- to order new equipment and supplies or return the faulty ones. The order process was more or less stable, it was the return process which was in flames. We had put checks and measures under a new framework to douse the proverbial fire and stop any recurring issues. And just when it seemed it was all well on course, "bloody return" arrived.

Tracing back the email trail, I was sitting with all the Operational leadership, Sarah and my manager Sai. Clueless why the customer was so pissed that he called it a 'bloody' issue- was beyond our wild imaginations. The trail revealed that the issue was raised by a warehouse to somebody in charge at the US, and from there it went to the CEO. Their CEO passed it on to ours and it trickled down all the levels down right at us. And nowhere the issue was clearly outlined, just a few more frustrating abuses including 'bloody' issue. We sniffed the contempt here for our India based operations from the US counterparts.But the first priority remained to find the root cause, plug it and correct for now, while prevent its occurrence in future altogether.

It took a few detailed calls with a few people on the other side of the globe for us to arrive at the damning realization- that we were staring that whole evening at this issue incorrectly. The return process actually had a simple scenario. If the product was broken, not functioning or incorrect item delivered, it was supposed to be returned to a given warehouse with full cost reimbursed to the customer. But in case, if the product had been exposed to a contaminated environment, for example inserted into a patient's body or been in contact with bodily fluids, it was supposed to be wrapped and packaged with a bio hazard sign before returning to the same warehouse. One of our agents on calls, asked the wrong question or understood the response incorrectly- God only knows- but he marked the issue at hand as a normal return. When the box arrived at the general return section of warehouse, it was opened by unsuspecting staff without any gloves or protective gears, to a terrorizing sight of blood soaked cotton and the faulty equipment in question.

Customer was right all along. It was literally a 'bloody return' while we thought it to be a matter of unjustly condescending tone. It was fixed later with additional checks and retraining of the agents on this particular process. But it taught me a valuable lesson forever. Having good command over the language doesn't equal to good communication. An agent's minor misunderstanding wreaked havoc across the globe. A whole bunch of responsible managers failed to capture the essence of the actual issue in whole email trail. And we all in that conference room kept scratching our heads with a narrow mind, for the root cause which had been present there in front of our eyes all along.

We all spoke, wrote or read, without thinking the state of mind of the person on the other side. We all understood without keeping the end customer perspective in mind. That's where our communication failed.

Life is too short to learn from your own mistakes. Learn from mine, Let it not repeat in your corporate or personal lives. Speak, read, write to Communicate.

While we are at the subject of corporate miscommunication, please enjoy some Dilbert gems below: