When someone leaves, what happens to everything they knew?

Your head of customer success gives notice on a Tuesday. Four weeks, plenty of time for a handover. She writes a clean ten-page document: accounts, renewal dates, open tickets, key contacts. She leaves on good terms.

Two months later, a customer calls about "what we agreed on during the spring review." Nobody knows what they mean. It isn't in the doc.

What never makes it into the doc

The handover wasn't bad. It covered what people naturally write down: stable facts. What it missed was everything else. Why that account got a custom contract. What was promised on a call in April. The customer who complains every quarter and always renews. The one-time discount that everyone forgot except the customer.

That knowledge isn't written anywhere because it was built in conversations. In a 2018 Panopto and YouGov survey, employees estimated that 42% of the knowledge they needed for their job wasn't shared by any coworker. When they leave, that share leaves with them.

Why handovers fall short

You're asking someone to recall, in a few weeks, everything they know. That can't work. People don't know what they know until someone asks the right question, and the right question tends to show up two months after they're gone, on a phone call with a customer.

So the problem starts long before the notice period. It starts every time a decision is made out loud and nobody keeps it.

What helps, with or without software

• Write decisions down when they're made, with the date and the reason, not when someone leaves.
• Keep a short record of important calls with customers and suppliers.
• Have two people share every key account, so no account lives in one head.
• During the notice period, let the successor ask questions instead of sitting through a monologue.

They all share one weakness: they take steady effort, and steady effort is the first thing to go when things are busy.

What KISMO changes

KISMO keeps a memory of conversations as they happen. Calls made through your KISMO number, video calls it's invited to, and the emails and documents you give it become memories. You review them, then distill them into the Brain, which pulls out what the company knows, what it decided and what's still open.

When your head of customer success leaves, part of what she knew is already in the Brain, linked to the conversations it came from. When the customer calls about the spring review, her successor asks: "What did we agree with this customer in the spring?" If the call was captured, the answer quotes it.

Not everything will be captured, and KISMO won't replace a good handover. But the handover starts from something written, and the new person doesn't have to guess what they don't know.