Battle Lines are Drawn – Between the Customer and the Company

It saddens me when I hear stories of customers and companies fighting over something that can be so simply resolved.  With everything going on in our lives, why do we choose to spend our energy fighting when working together can be so much more satisfying.

I just found a post written by Kevin Stirtz in which he tells a sad tale of returning an item at a regional home improvement store.  Things went fine until it came time to get his money back.  And then a fight ensued.  A manager had to be called. Blood pressures rose.   Kevin sums it up by saying:

They broke the first rule of Amazing Service. They failed to give me what I wanted right away. They made me fight for it.

At fault here are both the company and the employees.

Sure they might have been following store policy. But they were also being stupid. Whatever the company policy is don’t try to get a customer to accept something they clearly don’t want. And if you have the ability to give them what they want, then do it. Do it quickly and courteously.

Don’t make customers fight for what they want.

To me, this is a clear case where the employees and managers are trained to respect and adhere to the company policies; the customer be hanged.  Sometimes I wish we could just listen to how we sound.  I think if we could listen to ourselves argue with customers – later when the emotion is removed from the situation – it would almost be comical if it weren’t so sad. 

It reminds me of little kids fighting until the tears flow.  When you ask what the fight is about, most times they can’t even remember!  If we just LISTENED to what the customer wanted and thought creatively about how to fill their request we’d have far less customer battles.

What comes first in your company?  The policies or the customer?