People before Policy

We all know what it’s like to be a client or customer. There are businesses that still put their policies before people. When was the last time you heard the proverbial “I’m sorry we can’t do that” or” it’s not our policy”? It happens too frequently and it’s poor customer service in my book. I’ve been working with a client for the past year on improving their customer service levels to external and internal clients and they conducted a survey recently to see how they are doing. Happily I can report that the survey results were better than last year across all categories, but there’s still room to improve in select areas, one being a question concerning whether they put people before policy. Although there has been improvement the EVP of this organization wants to see continued improvement, so they implemented “COP”, Challenge Our Policies”. The employees have been asked to challenge the policies that they think are not in alignment with “people before policy” and must provide suggestions for improvement. It’s working; there have been several suggestions that are being considered for implementation.