“Rules are Rules!”

No, they’re not. How many times have you been confronted by this brain-dead excuse for why the person you’re talking to can’t (or more likely doesn’t want to) comply with your request? Folks, please believe me on this one. The Law of Gravity is a rule. Freedom of Speech (at least in the U.S.) is a rule. General relativity will be a rule until somebody comes up with a way around it, and it is a rule that purchasing a new vacuum cleaner for your wife for Valentine’s Day is a Bad Idea. The general company policies that people like to quote as a reason for avoiding work are not rules, and even if they were, they would not override the First Rule of Business or the Second Rule of Business (see my posts under those titles).

In fact, one could quite reasonably argue that any company rule that costs the organization more than it saves is stupid, counter-productive, and should be stricken as soon as humanly possible. In his seminal work on customer service, “Hey, I’m the Customer!” Ron Willingham tells the story of a dry cleaners that insisted on charging him separately for two very small alterations, even though their sign implied that the price quoted was per garment. By doing so, the company was able to gain $9.50 and stick to their “rules” – and lose at least $2,000 per year for the next decade, as Mr. Willingham was sufficiently annoyed to take his business elsewhere.

They gained $10; they lost $20,000. Clearly, following the rules is not doing this business any good. For that matter, when American Airlines would not let me purchase tickets for my wife and myself because it was less than 72 hours before flight time (they wanted each of us to purchase our own ticket, with our own credit card, with our own name on the card – but with no guarantee that we could have seats together!), they lost $1,000 on the spot – and probably ten times that overall, because I’ve never flown them again, and I’ve told everyone I can (including all of you) about the incident. God alone knows what benefit they think they were getting by adhering to that rule, but I have to question if it’s really worth the loss in revenue they’ve incurred.

So how does this happen? I regret to say, the fault lies not with our stars, but with ourselves. That is, it is the management team of each company that must take responsibility for these issues. On the positive side, we need to recognize good customer service, reward employees who go out of their way to take care of the customer and make the sale, and look at the big picture – not try to save $10 today at the cost of $20,000 over the next ten years. On the negative side, we need to supervise our people, make sure they actually explain what they can and can not do for the customer (and why), and keep them from using regulations, red tape or rules to avoid actually doing their jobs…

And we need to immediately fire, with extreme prejudice, anyone who uses the phrase “Rules are Rules!”