Customer service lives for emergencies. It’s comforting to remember a person who went out of their way to help when we truly needed it. Using the rules as an excuse not to, in that situation, is the worst thing a company can leave in people’s minds to stay.
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Calamities are a fact of daily life in some countries. When a typhoon hit ours, it flooded my house and damaged my car. After trying to call the phone company from neighbors, I walked to a branch to get my service back.
The man at the door asked why I was there. I was wearing slippers and the clothes I saved; he had on a condescending expression. When I explained, he told me to leave because the phone company only took repair requests by phone.
I stood musing his reply: to get my phone fixed, I needed to make a call. I was standing outside the local billing office. I assumed they took visitors, like paying customers. When I pointed this out, the man said I was acting difficult, and reminded me many people lost homes to the flooding.
There I was, a disaster victim, hearing about sensitivity from a person who wouldn’t let me through the door. I would’ve shown him “difficult” if I wasn’t so amused thinking the situation belonged in a Woody Allen movie.
The phone company didn’t think it was funny two weeks later. When I’d had enough, I borrowed a friend’s bandwidth (I got broadband from the same people) to write an email. I told them I was forwarding my thoughts about their customer service to newspapers, TV stations, and my congressman. My phone was ringing the next evening. Someone called to say the man got fired.
Sometimes rules need to be broken to treat a customer like a human being. What’s lost when we forget protocol and provide a customer service we can give ourselves? But those going through a trying time forget nothing; let the thought stick, instead of the rules.
