The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
What do you do when the policy is illegal?
Monday - July 31, 2006 04:09 PM in
Blogger Amy Alkon had a Cingular gift card. Had, because it expired in 2005. There's only one problem: apparently in California (where Alkon lives), there's a law that says gift cards aren't supposed to expire.
So Alkon does what any self-respecting rabble-rouser would do: she calls Cingular to demand that the company follow the law and unexpire her gift card.
I'm not an expert in the law, and I have no idea if Cingular's policy complies with California law or not.
But put yourself in the shoes of the poor customer service agent who gets this call. What do you do when a customer calls and says, "Your company's policy is illegal, and I demand that you change it right now for me"?
The agent's job is to handle customer problems within the confines of company policy. It is not the agent's job to decide if the policy makes sense, passes legal muster, or is the optimal business plan, and it is unreasonable to expect that a front-line CSR has the knowledge or ability to consider such issues. The agent has to assume that the company has carefully considered its policies and, for better or for worse, they are what they are.
In some cases the agent may be able to get around the problem by extending a "courtesy credit" to a high-value customer, but that's not always an option.
For what it's worth, here's the script I'd follow in that agent's shoes: "I'm very sorry about this, Ms. Alkon. You've obviously done a lot of research, and I can raise this issue with my supervisor, but it could take a very long time to settle this, since I imagine our corporate legal department will want to research it themselves. If you like, I can give you the address of our legal department, since it may be a lot quicker for you to go directly to them..."
Sadly, I don't think that answer will make anyone very happy.
Posted by Peter Leppik
I'm not an expert in the law, and I have no idea if Cingular's policy complies with California law or not.
But put yourself in the shoes of the poor customer service agent who gets this call. What do you do when a customer calls and says, "Your company's policy is illegal, and I demand that you change it right now for me"?
The agent's job is to handle customer problems within the confines of company policy. It is not the agent's job to decide if the policy makes sense, passes legal muster, or is the optimal business plan, and it is unreasonable to expect that a front-line CSR has the knowledge or ability to consider such issues. The agent has to assume that the company has carefully considered its policies and, for better or for worse, they are what they are.
In some cases the agent may be able to get around the problem by extending a "courtesy credit" to a high-value customer, but that's not always an option.
For what it's worth, here's the script I'd follow in that agent's shoes: "I'm very sorry about this, Ms. Alkon. You've obviously done a lot of research, and I can raise this issue with my supervisor, but it could take a very long time to settle this, since I imagine our corporate legal department will want to research it themselves. If you like, I can give you the address of our legal department, since it may be a lot quicker for you to go directly to them..."
Sadly, I don't think that answer will make anyone very happy.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 04:09 PM by | | | |