It takes a lot to get smoke pouring from my ears but a senior executive at my father’s bank pulled it off last week by confusing compliance with stupidity, er, I mean, an inability to serve.

My mission was simple: get money into my father’s account before the IRS withdraws money for taxes. As we all know, death and grief are no excuse for missing IRS deadlines.

Had the bank’s mission been to ensure compliance with privacy policies and good service, this executive would have told me that while he was unable to tell me anything about my father’s account, he could easily have acknowledged that yes, my money had arrived at his bank on time. That would have taken about 30 seconds and wasted none of my little gray cells. 

Because he confused compliance with the inability to serve, he:

• Insisted that his customer service representative, who was also of no help, was correct
• Insisted that he stood behind her 100%
• Insisted that he could not give me any information
• Insisted that I needed to fax power of attorney papers, which is wrong – there is no such thing for the deceased
• Ignored the paper I sent showing the government knew I was the personal representative
• Could not seem to understand that I was trying to make life easier for the bank, the IRS, and me
• Didn’t seem to care that my appointment as my father’s personal representative by the probate court is a matter of public record, which has apparently given everyone and his brother permission to send me sales pitches addressed accordingly
• Ignored my suggestion that if the money hadn’t arrived, perhaps he could call my bank to confirm that it was on its way so the IRS could be paid
• Wasted my morning, as well as my good humor
• Sent a good chunk of my brain cells up in smoke

For this executive, saying no was clearly more important than trying to solve a customer’s problem. Why think when you can hide behind the rules?

If there is any chance your employees confuse compliance with the ability to serve, you’ve got a problem. There are always ways to help customers without breaking important rules. However, to be successful, your employees must:

• Know that helping customers with problems is critical
• Be able to distinguish between unbreakable rules and standard practices
• Listen to the customer and challenge themselves to find a solution that meets the customer’s needs and complies with unbreakable rules

That a senior executive fell short on all three does not bode well for this bank.