Fractional Operations

Customer operations: nothing dying in the handoff

Most service failures are not caused by bad people. They are caused by a handoff nobody owns.


The symptom. Complaints get resolved, but nobody can say why they happened, so the same one arrives again next month.

What this actually is

The operational spine of service delivery, from first contact to resolution, with the gaps between people made explicit. Most customer problems are structural rather than attitudinal.

What it includes

The test

Do you know your actual response time, or do you know your intention about response time?

The pattern worth naming

Failure demand: contact created by having failed the customer earlier. The call chasing an answer, the second visit because the first was incomplete, the form returned because a field was missing. It looks like volume and it is really rework, and it is usually the largest recoverable cost in a service business.

Common questions

How do we set a service standard without over-promising?

Measure what you currently do for a month first. A standard set above demonstrated capability creates a second failure, which is the promise itself.

Is this only for businesses with a call centre?

No. Any business where work passes between people has handoffs, and the handoff is where service quality is decided.

This is one of ten lanes inside a single fractional operations retainer. Most owners need three or four to start. To talk it through, book a readiness call.

☎ Call