Our product return processing and vendor warranty recovery has grown into a six-figure drag on cash flow, but both Customer Support and Supply Chain refuse to own the seat on the Accountability Chart. How do we place and staff a seat when department heads insist it belongs in the other's lap?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

In EOS®, accountability is never shared, and critical work cannot live in no-man's land. When two department heads play hot potato with a function, it usually means the seat has been poorly defined or dumped on people without the corresponding authority or resources.

Start by defining the seat objectively using five clear roles. Do not debate who sits in it yet. Focus on the work: RMA intake triage, vendor warranty claims, parts credit reconciliation, root-cause defect logging, and recovery rate reporting. Look at the flow of value. If the core work is negotiating chargebacks and returning dead inventory to suppliers, it sits under Supply Chain. If the priority is client satisfaction and replacement turnaround speed, it sits under Operations or Customer Support.

Once the seat has a clear home under one major function, use IDS® in your Level 10 Meeting™ to resolve the dispute. The leader of that major function must own the seat or place a direct report into it. If that leader lacks capacity, they must still hold the box temporarily until they delegate or hire.

If neither leader has the capacity or desire, look at automation or outsourcing. An AI intake workflow can validate warranty terms and generate return labels instantly, shrinking the manual burden by eighty percent. What remains can then be absorbed by a junior coordinator. But the functional seat must live under one leader who is held accountable for the recovery metric on the Scorecard.