CASE STUDIES
They Reached 100% Quality, then a Dream Exit
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A B2B e-commerce company doubled every year in revenues and team.
We facilitated tens of thousands of customer payments every day. Occasionally, the payment processing team made mistakes. While the errors were rare, each one caused clients (including Fortune 500 companies) to miss thousands of transactions, resulting in losing hundreds of thousands of payments and sometimes losing their customers.
Disgruntled clients would call the founders day and night to complain, distracting their focus from growing the business to spending hours placating clients. The founders also worried that this poor execution would derail their exit plans.
The Problem
The processing team struggled with a largely manual and inconsistent process for each client, causing them to rush every day to complete all the tasks. Rushing led to more errors and less time to check the work. The development team that could automate the process prioritized new clients over current ones.
The clients faced enormous pressure to ensure their customers paid. I learned about their needs, encouraged them to inform me of any future issues or changes, and followed up regularly.
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The Fix
When I joined the team, we discussed how client satisfaction leads to retention and mitigates the risks of losing clients. The decision was made to dedicate some of their time to automation.
Next, we created a new quality team that would review the work with fresh eyes. And to encourage peer review, we offered the original team a bonus for 100% quality work.
Finally, we talked often about the end customers, folks like us who were trying to pay their bills. This approach turned faceless customers into real people we were servicing.
The Outcome
Within six months, we achieved nearly 100% efficiency. Every client renewed their contract, and some upgraded.
The founders noticed the absence of complaints and liked that their focus could shift back to expanding the business. Revenue doubled annually, and the startup enjoyed a wonderful acquisition by First Data Corp, a Fortune 500 company.
By building the right solutions and realigning motivation, we transformed our recurring error rate into near-perfect execution, retained major clients, and freed the founders to focus on scale and growth.