Good Judgment: The Customer Service Skill You Can’t Put in a Policy

This article answers the question: Why is good judgment an essential customer service skill?

Answer: Good judgment is an essential customer service skill because policies can’t possibly cover every situation, so employees need the ability and authority to find solutions that work for both the customer and the company.

Good judgment may be one of the most important customer service skills you can teach employees. To make my point, let me share a story. 

I recently made an online hotel reservation for my wife and me. Since she would be arriving before me, I wanted to add her name to the reservation so she could check in without me. Simple request, right? Apparently not! 

I couldn’t add her name online, so I opened the chatbot window on the hotel’s website. The chatbot said I should talk to a reservations agent. I was transferred and spoke with the agent, who said I needed to call the hotel directly to add my wife’s name. I did, and the front desk manager told me I needed to call the main reservations number, even after I explained that they told me to call the hotel.  

So reluctantly, I called the reservations number again. This time I reached a different agent who said, “I’d be happy to do it.”

Problem solved! But why could the second reservations agent easily do what the first one couldn’t? 

Maybe it was better training. Maybe she had more authority. Or maybe she simply used good judgment. Here’s the problem with policies and procedures: you can’t write one for every situation that could ever come up.  

Of course, employees need to know the rules. They need to understand the company’s policies and procedures. But eventually, a customer will make a request that doesn’t fit perfectly into any of them. 

That’s when good judgment takes over. I came up with a formula: 

Current Situation + Good Judgment = Optimum Outcome 

And the optimum outcome is one that works for both the customer and the company.  

Good judgment isn’t about simply saying yes to every customer’s request. Sometimes the customer asks for something that you can’t or shouldn’t do, but before automatically saying no, consider alternatives. 

My friend Christine Trippi, the author of Yes Is the Answer, has a great philosophy about this. Her point isn’t that you automatically say yes to every request. Instead of immediately saying no, explain what you can do and offer alternatives.

In other words, don’t focus on what you can’t do. Focus on what you can do. And that takes judgment.  

Companies should train employees on policies and procedures, but they should also prepare them for situations when the policy doesn’t have the answer. 

Role-play unusual requests from the past. Talk about different solutions. Give employees enough authority to make reasonable decisions within guidelines. And perhaps most importantly, teach them to ask themselves a simple question:  

What can I do to get us from where we are now to the best possible outcome for both the customer and the company? 

You can’t have a policy for everything. That’s why you need people with good judgment.