Due Diligence

In the marketplace there is an expectation from the buying public that a business will put some effort into their work. If a business person is not performing his or her professional tasks with due diligence, the client is being shortchanged. This means that the business or employee is not focusing on their job. Instead, their mind is elsewhere.

The absence of due diligence is the product of a badly managed business or a business looking for some quick, easy money. Some service repair companies are looking for the quick easy money and so do sloppy work without any attention to detail or care about the client. Here management is unwilling to hold tradesmen accountable to good work for fear of losing them, or management is just plain incompetent. Highly professional service companies are "on their workers" at every turn looking for any problems. These companies define clear professional protocols and decorum's.

For example, Comcast Corporation has a code of ethics but does not hold its employees accountable to the public in any meaningful way. Thus, an installer looking for a quick break for a hamburger simply lies to the company about showing up for a job. The company believes the installer and not the waiting customer. In a professional business there would be tight protocols that defined how loud the installer must knock on a door, how frequent, and it would require he try to contact the customer by phone. That having failed a professional protocol would require the dispatch to call and confirm the unavailability of the customer. Tradesmen require tight supervision, and, protocols would also go beyond this to make it clear to foremen and upper management that intentionally making it appear the serviceman showed up when in fact he was sent to another job is unacceptable. Comcast seems unable to provide such supervision.

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