Long Live Common Sense

I couldn’t believe it!! We were having a pretty good day at the pharmacy when all of a sudden I overheard one of our pharmacy technicians say to the customer: ”It is OUR POLICY that WE will not wait on you while you are talking on your cell phone.”

I was fascinated by the facts that:

A) As the manager, OUR “policy” was news to me. And more importantly:

B) This was the best “we could do” to deliver the message even if it was. And, interestingly:

C) The technician was legitimately surprised by the customer’s reaction to her “explanation of policy”.

Of course the customer went ballistic and I had to go into FIRE EXTINGUISHER mode.

It turns out that one of our pharmacists had instituted said “policy” in my absence, and since the employee liked it for obvious reasons, she was quick to “enforce it”.

Now I am not disputing the fact that it is extremely rude to expect people to wait on you while you talk on the phone to someone else. But, that is another common sense topic best saved for later!!

It does however beg the question: ”Does the word ‘policy’ EVER need to be used when speaking to the customer?”

I’m going with NO, ABSOLUTELY NOT! Policy was not meant to be ENFORCED or even EXPLAINED. It was meant as a GUIDELINE to use when you are not sure which path to follow. It was not meant to replace common sense.

I asked the customer to go for a walk with me, shared that I agreed that she had been treated improperly and that the message the technician meant to deliver was that we had very important health information to give her and that we were concerned that her safety might be jeopardized if we did not have her full attention. I assured her this ‘incident” would prompt a staff meeting with the chief topic being customer SERVICE.

At the meeting I shared that it was okay to expect a customer to “pay attention”, but it was NEVER okay to throw common sense out the window!! I explained MY ‘policy’ that we should NEVER use the word policy when speaking to a customer!!

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Bio:
Corey Jahnke is the author of “We Are Not Here On Rehearsal” and the creator of SuccessEqualsValue.com. Corey is a John C. Maxwell certified success coach AND a Bob Burg certified Go-Giver Coach. Corey’s company, Legend Crafters, helps people go from stuck to unstuck, from unstuck to remarkable and from remarkable to legendary. Will YOU become a legend?

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