A well-known
international chain store which prides itself on the quality of its goods and
fashion as well its service quality recently came across my radar from a lady
who had been injured in one of their stores caused, by what appears to be,
staff negligence. The incident was recorded in the store. However the issue
raised here is not to do with establishing the liability of one party or
another but to do with the treatment the customer received from the office of
the chief executive.
The customer
contacted the chief executive’s office on a number of occasions through a
series of conversations that failed at any time to have the company express any
kind of regret or sympathy and eventually led to the customer being told that
if they felt they had a case then take it to court.
What could
have led to such behaviour? Is it that
the whole world is becoming more litigious and therefore the company is advised
by its lawyers and/or insurers to play hardball from the offset in the hope
that many customers will give up rather than embark on a process of stressful
litigation or is it that they categorise these customers differently?
This is,
after all, a customer bringing a complaint to the company. Not about a product
or service failure but about the performance of a member of their staff. Had
the staff member been rude to the customer or mis-sold to the customer this
would undoubtedly have been redressed by their complaints process, but it seems
here that the complaints process ends when personal injury is involved.
So what does
that say? It’s not OK to be rude to customers and if you are you will be
reprimanded but it is OK to injure them?
So where
should the Customer Service Process end? Could there not be a more empathetic
way of dealing with such incidents? The
store in question has lost this customer for ever and those in their circle of
influence are suitably shocked by the way this person has been moved from loyal
customer to legal adversary at a stroke. Had the rejection occurred at a local
level it may have been possible to view this as a one off aberration, the fact
that it came from the chief executive’s office tends to indicate it is a
strategic decision underpinned by a policy of denial of any kind of liability.
Philip Forrest
