Two Answers on a Return

I called a client’s shop as a customer would and asked about returning an item. Customer service told me, “No problem, full refund.” I called the warehouse line five minutes later with the same question and was told, “We only do store credit after 14 days.”

Neither person was wrong, exactly — each one was giving the honest answer as they understood it. The return policy had just never actually been written down and agreed on company-wide. It evolved separately in two departments that rarely talk to each other, and both versions felt equally official to the people repeating them.

That’s a hard thing for a customer to notice gracefully. It’s usually not subtle when it happens to them.

If two different people on your team answered the same customer question today, are you confident they’d give the same answer?