Deflection: How Corporate Gets to Be the Good Guy

"I'm calling corporate."  

Anyone who works a customer service job for a corporation has heard that lovely little line.  When I was a manager at Starbucks, I once had a customer come in to return a few packs of K-Cups.  It was one of those "eh, just changed my mind" kind of returns.  Of course, she had no receipt, and of course, she claimed to have paid in cash.  By policy, the biggest thing we were told not to do with returns/refunds was to issue a cash refund for merchandise with no receipt.  In fact, that policy had very recently been reiterated to us at a store manager summit.

So, I told the customer, "I'm sorry, but without a receipt we can only issue the refund as a store credit."  She wasn't having it, and asked for the number to our corporate customer service line.  I obliged, honestly assuming that the corporate rep would tell her the same thing I did.  Boy was I wrong.

She stepped outside with phone in hand, and walked back in a few minutes later.  When she came through the door, I immediately noticed two things: 1) She was sobbing, and 2) She was still on the phone.  I was thinking, "Wow, she must be pitching a fit for not getting her way."  As she walked towards me, she extended the phone my way, as to indicate they want to talk to me.  Here we go...

"This is Ken..."

"Hi Ken, are you the manager of this location?

"Yes I am."

"Can you please explain to me why you can't give this customer a simple refund on her K-Cups?"

"Well, she didn't have a receipt, so I was trying to follow our policies by offering her a store cr..."

"This lady called us in tears!  I don't see how you couldn't resolve this situation for her, to the point that she had to call us crying like that.  It's not even $25 of merchandise, why can't you just give her the refund?"

Wasn't expecting that.  This customer service rep was literally yelling at me.  I wasn't going to fight it.  "Alright, I'll give her the refund if you insist, but you're going to have to tell me how to do it because our system won't even let it process without a transaction number."

I don't even remember what happened after that except that we eventually gave the customer the money.  This is just one example among many of how store-level employees are made out to be the bad guys and corporate gets to save face when problems arise that they created.  The company created the policy.  The policy created the problem.  The company overrode the problem to play the hero, leaving the store-level employees to look like incompetent jerks.

This dynamic isn't something that just plays out on occasion in specific circumstances.  It is part of the fabric of how corporations operate.  If a customer goes to a restaurant, and the wait is long, or the order isn't accurate, or the tables are dirty, who will the customer blame?  The employees of that store, of course.  It will never occur to a customer that corporate slashing of labor could be a bigger part of the problem.  It will never occur to a customer that low wages, or poor training, or bad scheduling practices, or lack of sick days, or any such corporately-controlled factor could possibly be the underlying problem.

All they can see is what's in front of them:  "My order isn't ready yet, these employees must be slow."  "This table hasn't been cleaned yet, these employees must be lazy."  Everything that happens at the store level is assumed to be a store-level problem, which is a fiction that the corporation is very happy to maintain.  If the customer complains to corporate, corporate can say, "We're sorry you did not experience the level of service we pride ourselves on.  Your feedback will be forwarded to the local management to ensure that the problem is addressed."  Do you see the trick?  The corporation remains the good guy.  The corporation is the one saying, "Service should be excellent, orders should be accurate, fulfillment should be quick, staff should be friendly, etc."  The corporation is the one enforcing those standards.  The corporation is the one correcting when things go wrong.  What's not to love about the corporation??

Meanwhile, the customer will never get the slightest inkling that decisions made at the corporate level could be the cause of the problems in the first place.

Just for fun, imagine the situation in reverse.  A customer complains to a low-level employee about a long wait on a day that the store is understaffed, and the employee responds, "We're sorry to hear that you didn't receive our best service today.  We will be sure to give your feedback to corporate in order to ensure that our stores are properly staffed in the future."  The employee would be fired.  The corporation cannot be faulted for anything.  It is the unpardonable corporate sin.