Company Policies and Procedures are Not the Law
Admittedly I'm straying a bit from the business LAW theme of this blog, but when I came across this story in Business Week I knew I had to share it. You may already be aware of this story because it apparently has become quite a phenom, but somehow I missed it until now.
Musician Dave Carroll was traveling via United Airlines with his band mates from the band Sons of Maxwell. While sitting on the tarmac, they witnessed their instruments being tossed around by the ground crew. They reported the incident that second, but according to United Airlines the official report that one of the guitars had been officially damaged was not reported to the official official until after the company dictated 24-hour deadline. Carroll spent nine months trying to get United Airlines to do the right thing, and when he reached the final, official "no" from a company representative (identified in the song as "Ms. Irlweg"), he promised he would write, perform and post three videos about the incident on YouTube. The video link above is the very entertaining first installment of the planned trilogy.
After the video attracted more than 3 million viewers on YouTube, United Airlines agreed to donate money to a charity as an apology to Mr. Carroll. The complete story can be found on Dave Carroll's website.
Lesson for all businesses: I've not yet been involved with a case where the offending company was attacked by way of song, but I get calls every week from companies that let minor situations get out of hand and are now the subject of attack blogs. Your company's policies and procedures are not the law, so don't cite them as justification for rejecting a legitimate complaint. Indeed, even if the law is behind you, that's no basis to deny a valid claim. Do you really want your business practices to be no better than the minimum required by law? Look at what happen to Bank of America when it tried to quote the law to our client. When you receive a customer complaint, consider that you may be dealing with another Dave Carroll.
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You identify a common misunderstanding regarding company policies and procedures. The customer should come first. Company policies and procedures are written to ensure the customer is satisfied and not that rules are followed over the customer’s satisfaction. If a policy or procedure needs to be broken to satisfy a customer than perhaps there is a problem with the policy or procedure. Improve it and you may please more than just one customer.