See It, Own It, Then Fix It

In our last article, we introduced the four layers of scaffolding every lasting solution needs, and we promised to explore each one: where AI can help, where it can’t, and why the foundation matters just as much as the tools you build with. This article covers the first two layers: Identification & Acknowledgment and Accountability & Ownership.

Let’s pick back up where we left off. Your contact center’s ASA (Average Speed of Answer) is climbing. Customers are waiting longer, service levels are slipping, and leadership wants it fixed this quarter.

Before you reach for a fix, notice what has already gone right: someone saw it. A climbing ASA doesn’t announce itself. Somebody was watching the right number at the right time. That isn’t luck. It’s the first layer of scaffolding doing its job.

Layer 1: Identification & Acknowledgment

Identification: three ways to see a problem

There are three main ways to spot a problem, and none of them should be your only source. They work together so you find problems quickly and accurately.

• Reporting is your routine physical. It’s a regular health check that confirms everything is running as intended and shows you trends before they become emergencies. It can be a daily email, a dashboard on an app’s home screen or metrics on your company’s intranet. Whatever the format, it needs a set schedule, consistent KPIs and comparisons over time so that a downturn stands out.
• Alerting is your fire drill. Alerts catch what reporting can miss between checkups: the moment a metric moves outside its normal range by a margin you’ve set. Every alert should name a person and an action, and both should be agreed on when you set it up, not in the middle of an incident. And like a fire drill, you have to practice. (No, not stop, drop and roll.) Run a simulation so that when your checkout page goes down, everyone knows what to do.
• Command centers build awareness across the organization. They’re ideal for big releases, Black Friday, PR events, or anything else that could suddenly hit your brand, revenue, product or technology. A big-box retailer we supported for years in digital analytics had screens throughout the organization, including in break rooms, the cafeteria and meeting rooms, so that everyone, not just the analysts, was listening to customers. The screens also advertised the analytics team. People who saw them would ask what they were, and then ask whether the team could measure something they’d been running or investing in.

Acknowledgment: seeing it isn’t the same as acting on it

Spotting a problem is only half of this layer. A climbing ASA is easy to explain away: it’s seasonal, we’re short-staffed this week, it’ll level off. Acknowledgment means agreeing as an organization that the problem is real, who is feeling it and how you know. Until that happens, a dashboard full of red is just noise.

We’ve seen this firsthand when presenting Voice of Customer findings to C-suite executives. More than once, walking out of a meeting that finally drove action, the VoC program owner has told us, “I’ve raised this issue three times, and they never acted on it.” The data hadn’t changed. What changed was how it was delivered: the impact was clear, and it was made personal.

Where AI helps in Layer 1, and where it doesn’t

AI is a strong fit for identification. It can summarize reports, spot anomalies and tell when a metric has drifted far enough to trigger an alert. But don’t let the summary replace the details, and don’t let the technology replace the process: someone still has to vet what each alert means and who acts on it. AI also can’t do acknowledgment for you. It can surface the data, but it can’t tell the story that gets an executive to act. Humans tell stories.

Layer 2: Accountability & Ownership

Accountability: assign it before anything breaks

Alerting gives you accountability in the moment, but that’s reactive. Ideally, accountability is assigned before anything goes wrong. Tie a name to each part of the experience that matters, whether it’s checkout or product pages on a website or app, or hold times in the contact center. Someone needs to answer for the decisions that show up on those reports, good or bad.

When I worked in a past CX role, our best clients asked one question before any decision got made: did you check what customers were telling you first? That’s the goal: a culture where finding and owning problems happens before the decision, not after the damage.

Ownership: many people can be accountable, but only one person owns it

Ownership goes a step further than accountability. The owner is in charge of the change and its outcome, and makes sure the result lasts. To do that, the owner wears three hats:

• Project manager. Keeps track of the initiatives and of everyone accountable for fixing the problem.
• Decision maker. Reviews the options and chooses the right solution. The owner won’t always be the most senior person in the room, and that’s fine. One of Voyage’s core practices is the Obligation to Dissent: if you see something wrong, say so, regardless of rank. The other side of that practice is that the owner, whatever their title, has to be empowered to make the call.
• Enforcer. Puts the decision into practice and reinforces it over time. This is where another Voyage practice, Disagree and Commit, comes in. Once the decision is made, everyone accountable puts their full effort behind it, even if they argued for a different outcome.

Where AI helps in Layer 2, and where it doesn’t

AI can make the owner’s job easier: sending an alert to the right person, tracking who committed to what, and flagging when an action item stalls. But accountability and ownership are human commitments. AI can’t own an outcome, make a judgment call between competing priorities, or get a team to commit to a decision it disagreed with.

Back to your ASA

With these two layers in place, the climbing ASA plays out differently. Your reporting shows the trend early. An alert fires and goes to a named person with an agreed first step. The organization acknowledges the problem instead of explaining it away. One owner leads the response, and everyone accountable is committed to the plan. You haven’t fixed ASA yet, but you know the problem is real, why it matters and who is in charge of fixing it. That’s the foundation the next two layers build on.

In our next and final installment, we’ll close out the series with the last two layers: Collaboration & Tools and Solution & Nurture.

Because no matter how advanced the tools become, you still need the right scaffolding to build something that lasts.