Internal memo on delegating decision‑making to outsourced customer service reps

related questions myself. The result? I received more than 200 e-mail per day, spending all hours between 9-5 responding to them, and the volume was growing at a rate of more than 10% per week! I had to cancel advertising and limit shipments, as additional customer service would have been the final nail in the coffin. It wasn’t a scalable model. Remember this word, as it will be important later. It wasn’t scalable because there was an information and decision bottleneck: me. The clincher? The bulk of the e-mail that landed in my inbox was not product-related at all but requests from the outsourced customer service reps seeking permission for different actions: The customer claims he didn’t receive the shipment. What should we do? The customer had a bottle held at customs. Can we reship to a U.S. address? The customer needs the product for a competition in two days. Can we ship overnight, and if so, how much should we charge? It was endless. Hundreds upon hundreds of different situations made it impractical to write a manual, and I didn’t have the time or experience to do so regardless. Fortunately, someone did have the experience: the outsourced reps themselves. I sent one single e- mail to all the supervisors that immediately turned 200 e-mail per day into fewer than 20 e-mail per week: Hi All, I would like to establish a new policy for my account that overrides all others. Keep the customer happy. If it is a problem that takes less than $100 to fix, use your judgment and fix it yourself. This is official written permission and a request to fix all problems that cost under $100 without contacting me. I am no longer your customer; my customers are your customer. Don’t ask me for permission. Do what you think is right, and we’ll make adjustments as we go along. Thank you, Tim Upon close analysis, it became clear that more than 90% of the issues that prompted e-mail could be resolved for less than $20. I reviewed the financial results of their independent decision-making on a weekly basis for four weeks, then a monthly basis, and then on a quarterly basis. It’s amazing how someone’s IQ seems to double as soon as you give them responsibility and indicate that you trust them. The first month cost perhaps $200 more than if I had been micromanaging. In the meantime, I saved more than 100 hours of my own time per month, customers received faster service, returns dropped to less than 3% (the industry average is 10-15%), and outsourcers spent less time on my account, all of which resulted in rapid growth, higher profit margins, and happier people on all sides. People are smarter than you think. Give them a chance to prove themselves. If you are a micromanaged employee, have a heart-to-heart with your boss and explain that you want to be more productive and interrupt him or her less. “I hate that I have to interrupt you so much and pull you away from more important things I know you have on your plate. I was doing some reading and had some thoughts on how I might be more productive. Do you have a second?” Before this conversation, develop a number of “rules” like the previous example that would allow you to work more autonomously with less approval-seeking. The boss can review the outcome of your decisions on a daily or weekly basis in the initial stages. Suggest a one-week trial and end with “I'd like to try it. Does that sound like something we could try for a week?” or my personal favorite, “Is that HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_013863