cx-policy-practice-divergencelisted

# Policy versus practice The question is whether the answer customers receive is the answer the company intends. It is asked in two situations: a specific complaint where someone may have been misinformed, and a proactive audit of a topic that matters. The analysis fails in a specific way if you are not careful, and the failure manufactures violations that do not exist. See step 2. ## Four outcomes, not two For each conversation where the topic arose, classify what the agent asserted: | Outcome | Meaning | Owner | | --- | --- | --- | | **Matches** | The answer given agrees with documented policy | — | | **Contradicts** | The answer given conflicts with documented policy | Compliance / QA | | **Policy silent** | There is no documented answer; the agent improvised | Knowledge / policy owner | | **No answer given** | The topic arose and was deflected, escalated, or ignored | Process / training | **"Policy silent" is usually the largest bucket and the most actionable finding**, and an audit framed as pass/fail never surfaces it. When six agents give six different reasonable answers to the same question, nobody has done anything wrong — the documentation has a hole, and every one of those answers is a future complaint. Report it as a documentation gap with the specific question that needs an answer. The distinction between "contradicts" and "policy silent" decides who owns the fix, so make it deliberately rather than defaulting everything to a coaching finding. ## Step 1: