Perceived bad quality due to bad internal communication

Problem

"I was the lead dev in a telecom company and we would deliver new features to telephone providers. Clients were complaining about a lot about our product which did not reflect the quality of what we were delivering. After a quick investigation, I figured customer support teams were not following the proper installation procedures and not using the troubleshooting tools we had developed. Clients were not happy and support would come up to us with simple issues they could have solved on the spot."

Actions taken

"I decided to take responsibility for this communication issue. I, therefore, asked the support team to have someone from my team take part during installation. I also asked them to have someone from their team there during our testing phase. This made everyone more aware of the other team's issues and, as a result, improved communication. We also worked on improved documentation, settings, and logs to facilitate the installation process."

Lessons learned

"Solving problems is all about taking responsibility and being proactive towards a solution. It seems that whenever you make the first step, other stakeholders are very likely to be supportive and make it work."