Nuremberg Defense

My wife was recently shopping at a large retail story to buy an assortment of gifts for various people. She was buying three separate items and wanted three separate gift receipts for the items. Not an unreasonable request and the cashier able to do the gift receipts for the first two items. With the third item however the clerk forgot to enter it as a gift and was only able to provide a normal receipt. My wife said that she needed the gift receipt still and asked the cashier to change it. The only way the cashier could change it was to do a return and then re-purchase the item. To do the return however they needed a form filled out. Aaarghhh.

Blindly following company policy and putting customers through the run around (we've all been there) is no where near best practices for improving customer experience. Companies should fully train all staff on returns procedures and other policies, but they should also provide customer perspective training on how it impacts them.

Companies should develop policies with flexibility and discretion to handle customer concerns and deal with the issue at hand, rather than needing to invoke an alternative policy to resolve a particular situation.