Setting Customer Expectations and Empowering Employees to Solve Problems – Small Business Show 165

The Small business show episode 165 for Wednesday, April 4, 2018. Greetings folks and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow co. We are the show that is by, for and yes, about small business owners. Sponsors for this episode include Simple Contacts, where@simplecontacts.com SBS you can save 30 bucks off of this really cool business model thing that allows you to get your contact lenses without having to leave the house. So we'll talk more about that in a minute. Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave.

Hamilton and in Lafayette, California, I am Shannon Jean. How are you, man?

I'm good, yeah. Been a productive week here. Which is, which is good. You know, that's how it's, that's good.

Considering, you know, get about halfway through. So that's great.

Yeah, yeah.

It's always nice to knock those things off the list instead of having the list just grow longer and longer.

It is, yeah. I saw somebody post something, I think it was on Facebook or something where it's like, oh yeah, I've built my to do list. Now I just got to figure out who's going to, who's going to do it. So yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm not a big list guy. I mean I've tried every single thing you can imagine for lists. But I mean, and I've just found often that, you know, using a piece of paper or the list built in thing in the Mac OS works fine. I can just check them off instead of trying to use some to do app or those kinds of things just don't work great for me.

Oh yeah, same years ago, before any of those systems certainly were available on computer. I mean, I think the whole Franklin Planner thing existed and the concepts of all these things existed. But the first one that I really used on a computer was with something called now up to Date, which was just a calendar. Pokemon Mac. Well, it has become Busy Cal on the Mac. Like the same guys that built that, they then sold it off and it was sort of like the people that had it did a horrible job with it for a long time and then the original guys came back and it's Busy Cal now. And the to do list in there is what I started using 30 years ago, something like that maybe. And it works great for me because it's just that, right. I mean it's very similar to Apple's reminders. You can just move things from day to day, you can categorize them, but there's none of this like, you know, it's not overly Complex. It's just a simple list. And here's the crap I need to get done. And when it's done, I check it. And if I didn't get it done today, it bounces to tomorrow. Or, you know, if it's like a thing I need to do every week or once a month or once a quarter, when I check it off, it, you know, it, it, it fast forwards it to wherever it needs to happen again. And it works great for me. It's just simple. Yeah.

Yeah. I think that's. That is the key. The simplicity part of it. And like the reminders, you know, having my phone in my pocket throughout the day, being able to drop reminders and, you know, verbally has made me dramatically more productive because that's just, you know, I'm bouncing around and yeah, I have a pretty, pretty wide bandwidth, but I also, you know, can easily skip things and move on to something that I actually would enjoy doing versus something I need to.

Just needs to get done.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's kind of, it's kind of cool.

So.

Yeah, I like it.

Yeah.

So, hey, we're talking, we're going to jump back and talk about customer service today, right? Some customer service.

Yeah.

Things. Yeah, yeah. Because we each had a few experiences that, you know, it's interesting being small business owners and I'm sure a lot of you listening can, you know this too. Yeah. Relate. When you're getting customer service or trying to get a problem solved, you know, I can't help but think about how I would handle it for my business or my employees and how you would do it. And I'm constantly amazed how. Yeah, yeah. How poorly things are handled and particularly certain industries or categories of businesses. I think we're going to talk about today where if things were handled just, you know, a little bit better, someone could be phenomenally successful. And so.

Yeah.

So I'm interested in hearing your stories and a couple stories you got. And I have.

I think you got one too. Yeah.

Things as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So last week I think I mentioned that I was doing the. The show in my cold studio or perhaps I had a space heater. I did have a space heater, I think running because the heat was not functional in the building my office is in. Right. And it was really interesting. We woke up Monday morning and this part was. So here's a tip for anybody that's got smart home or a smart thermostat. Right. I have a Wi Fi thermostat. I've got one of those Nest Things here in the studio. It's great for one room. Nest is sort of awful for a house, I think. But anyway, NEST is great for a room. I have it wired up to it. IFT. Ifttt to warn me when the temp dips below a certain number in here. Right. Because that way I know, like, if I have the heat set at 57 and the heat gets below 55, there's something's wrong. Yeah, something's wrong. So I did. I woke up last Monday and saw the alert and thought, well, I've never seen that before, you know. And sure enough, I came over and I realized that the. The boiler was trying to work, but. But it, it was not. And so, okay, fine. Called the service company and they had just been out here and we identified a part that was making some noise and was. Was going to go. And they even said to me, we don't know if it's going to be a day, a week, you know, a month, maybe a year. But like, that's at the outside. I was like, yeah, okay, fine. And. And so we called him and, and said, yeah, we have no heat. Like, okay, great, we'll be there before noon. Okay, that, that day. That day. Right. Because you have no present. Like, we're gonna.

So they set that expectation. Yeah, set that expectation. Hey, we're gonna come out quickly.

That's the key, is they set the expectation. If they had told me we can't make it until tomorrow. Well, I mean, okay, like, it's not.

You would almost expect that, right?

Yeah, it's my problem. Yeah, well, I wouldn't have expected it because this is how they've always been. They've always said, we'll be there, you know, before noon. Or, you know, they're pretty quick about this stuff. When you have no feet, they prioritize you. Cool. Okay, so fine, you know, 11 o' clock rolls around. I haven't seen him yet. That's a little weird. We haven't heard from him. That's not so weird. And so I called again and they said, oh, yeah, so. And so is still working on his first call, but he'll be there when he's finished. Okay, well, when is that? Like what you had said before? Like, I didn't set the before noon thing. I didn't request it. This was your idea to tell me this? You know, like, what's the story? Well, you know, it'll probably, probably be like an hour. I said, cool, can you call me if it's not going to be. Well, you know, I get this thing. So two hours later I call him. Hey, still not here. You know, so now we're at like one o'. Clock. Oh yeah, you know, he's still working on this. I said, okay, like, what's the story? Is somebody going to make it here? Oh yeah, we'll be there today. Okay, great, great, great. And you know, another two hours go by. Nothing. I call. Oh, yeah, yeah, we're going to figure this out. Like it was every time I called, it was like, oh, right, we've got to think about this. There was no, I never felt like there was someone on the other end that was owning this particular case. Like, I had to be the one, the catalyst every time to. Oh, reminding them that we needed it. And that's just, I mean it. Like the problem was that they set my expectations by, you know, by noon.

That's right.

Right.

And they've already disappointed you several times.

Correct. And no one was, this was, this was par for the course based on the attitude that I was getting. Like, nobody was like, wow, I'm really sorry. We told you noon and now it's, you know, 2:30 and there's still nobody there. I apologize. Let me see if I can figure this out for you. It was like, yeah, it's still not ready, you know, and then finally, maybe 20 minutes after that, we get a phone call and they say someone else is on their way. Like they, they, they finally punted on whichever guy this was. He was, you know, on a call that just went sideways, which happens. You know, it does happen. I get that. Yeah. And so he came out and the guy gets here at like, you know, whatever, quarter four or something and starts digging in. And I said, look, here's what we think it is. But you know, you do you like. I just want to give you the information that we have because you weren't one of. You weren't the one that came last week and saw it. And so he does his tests and comes up, you know, 15, 20 minutes later and says, yep, it's that blower motor. We got to get a new one. Here's the problem. That part, you know, the parts stores all close at 4 o'. Clock.

That's nice.

So we can't get it today. And I said to him, look, I know this isn't your fault, right. You're just out there doing your job. But, you know, here's the thing. We were told you were going to be here by noon. The parts store is open. Then this kind of sucks for me. I said, I'm just telling you that so that, you know, it's not your fault. Like, you know, you didn't make the promise. You came out and fixed it. And the guy was like, yeah, but we'll be, you know, he says, I just talked to the office. We've got you in for tomorrow morning. They'll get the part. They'll come out and they'll do it. So we call, we called the office after he left, confirmed. Yep, it'll be there, you know, before noon tomorrow. We just have to send somebody to the parts store, get the thing and, and okay, great. Nope, look, we'll deal with it. You know how it is.

Sounds great.

Sounds great. 10:30 the next morning, still haven't heard anything. Well, actually we called them at like seven when we, you know, when we were getting up and said, yeah, okay, great. Like they're like, yep, you're on the schedule.

Still going to happen.

Yep, still going to happen. Cool. 10:30, I call them up, yeah, yeah, they'll be there this afternoon. And I said, okay, like, why did you tell me it would be this morning then? Well, we're sending somebody to get the part, but it's going to come from, you know, this other place and, but somebody's on the way to get the part. They're, you know, they'll be there this afternoon. I said, well, what's that mean? We've, we, you know, we're not available this afternoon. We have things that, that were scheduled that we moved around. Because you said, you're going to be here this morning.

Sure.

And they said, well, yeah, okay. You know, I said, you can come like after 3:30. Like, well, our time windows don't work that way. And at this point I'm saying, well, how do your time windows work? Because you don't seem to care about your time windows. You know, you say before then, right? It's this constant. They're the ones setting the expectation every time and then missing it. And I told them, I said, you can either come after 3:30 this afternoon, you can come all night. We're going to be here, whatever, no problem, or you got to be here first thing tomorrow morning. I can't do this before noon. Well, our windows work. I said, look, you gotta, like, you gotta figure this out because I can't keep playing this game with you. You've missed it now twice. And finally somebody, yeah, finally somebody there said, okay, like, I'll own this. And then it turns out they didn't even have the part. Like, they called me back and the Guy's like, okay, so you've been told a lot of bad things here. He said the part's actually coming via FedEx and it won't be in our office until like 10am tomorrow morning.

Wow.

He's like, but as soon as it's here, we've got somebody that's literally going to sit here and wait for the FedEx driver and then just drive to your house and fix it. And that finally happened, right? I mean, that's true. And they got it fixed. And here's the thing, like, so by noon on Wednesday, this problem was solved and everything was good. If they had told me on Monday morning we can't get someone there until 4 o', clock, they would have beat their expectation. They would have been there by 3:30. Right?

That's right.

If that day they had said, look, we don't know where the part is, you know, let us figure this out. We'll call you in the morning when we can figure that out and then we'll tell you whether we'll come right away or you know, what the story is. It like getting it fixed by Wednesday would have totally been fine. We wouldn't even be talking about it on this show. It was them choosing to over promise and under deliver that led to this scenario that required actually even on their end, it required a massive exception process because that Wednesday morning they had an all hands meeting that like the head of the company was coming in and you know, supposed to like talk to everybody and no one was allowed to have a service call. They cut this one guy loose from the all hands meeting. They needed like, you know, C suite approval to do this because they, because they're like, well, we've screwed this customer. But they didn't, like, it was all.

Didn'T have to, didn't have to be this way.

If they had just told me we'll be there at noon on Wednesday to fix it. It's like, okay, like fine.

Well what am I supposed to. Not only.

Yeah, that's right.

And not only is it disruptive for you, the customer, it's massively disruptive for the company. Massively disruptive over and over. And I would say that, that the key thing, you know, is when you first talk to the customer, you have to set that right expectation. And if, you know, we used to do the same thing and try to tell the customer because there's a lot of unknowns. Number one, they have to, they have to get there and, and they're, they're working on another project before you so they don't really know how long that's going to take.

You can't so. Right.

They need to tell you. Hey, look, they just tell you that we've got. You're the second stop. We don't have a firm ETA on it, but we, we know we're going to be there today or whatever it is. Okay. We're going to be today. It might be up till 4 o'. Clock. Okay, great. So then if they got there at 1, you'd be happy, you'd be excited, right? Well, because they.

In today's day and age, it's not impossible. And I say today's day and age, but I have a story and a policy to share from 20 years ago where this also worked just fine. But it's really easy for us to be in touch with each other. Like, we don't have to play this, wait around and wonder when the person is finished with their previous job to show up. Like they're gonna tell the office when they're leaving their previous job. I know that it's very easy for the office to either call or text me.

Send you a text.

Yeah. And that's it. Like, I get that you might not want to call because now you're engaging with this person that might or might not be happy, but if you text me and say, you know, Timmy's on his way and it's going to be, you know, he'll be there within the next hour. Awesome. Great. That gives him time to stop and pee and get food or whatever Timmy needs. And then, you know, Timmy's at my house. It's great. Yeah.

And I think that a big part of it, too, is if there's bad news, you want to be the one making that call to the customer, not the other way around.

The other way around.

It changes the entire dynamic of the conversation. If you've been dodging the customer or your, your, your employees have been dodging the customer, trying to figure things out, and then they call you and you've already missed a couple of, you know, deadlines or whatever.

Whatever.

And then you have to break bad news. This thing isn't even going to be here. You're just. It's bad all around. But if you're, if you get out in front of it and I really like, you know, when we were quoting timeframes, we never use. We always use hours. So if it was going to be two days, it was 48 hours. Because it. I feel like, you know, in my head, that sounds faster than telling you two days. So we would say, well, our expectation is that we're going to have this diagnosed within 48 hours or even 72. After 72 hours you can't really, I don't think you can use hours.

Yeah, nobody understands.

Too long. 28 hours, it doesn't work. But 24, 48, 72, I think that's great. It sounds in my mind urgent.

Urgent. Yeah, that's exactly right.

It's. And you're important and you know, from your conversation with them, clearly you're not feeling that you're important to them when you keep having to call them and no one is taking ownership until that last guy got on and said, look, you know, we, we've been not giving you all the right data and this part isn't even going to be here tomorrow. Yeah, well, you know, I've lived in that world for 20 plus years where you're often waiting for parts and you have to tell the customer, look, I've ordered the part. I. And you got to be transparent either. I don't have a tracking number yet.

Yep.

So I can't tell you it's going to, you know, be here tomorrow. But I ordered it and it support it, you know, with the intention of having it delivered tomorrow. Once I get a tracking number, we will alert you.

And then you have to deliver on that, right?

Yeah. You have to alert them.

Yes.

You have to go, oh, you know, order whatever. Got the tracking number, FedEx has picked it up. Tell the customer, send them a text, send them an email that it's on the, on the plane and we're going to follow up with them again tomorrow. It's keeping that chain of communication going and making the customer.

Yeah.

And making them feel like they are.

Important, that they matter and yeah.

Even if they're a total nightmare and are just the squeaky wheel that's driving your team crazy. All the more reason to use automation and to, you know, make this stuff seamless. You know, where you've got some software connected to your ordering or your, you know, customer relationship management software, whatever you're using that is going to go in with updates. And you know, we had it set up where when you updated a note, you could check the box and the customer would get an email or an SMS text with that update and they would just constantly, we would just overload them with data and people typically love that.

Yeah.

And you know, what's going on? Oh, we've got a delay here, delay there. And if you're in front of it the whole time, it goes back to the first thing we said here, it's setting that expectation for the customer. And most people are pretty cool if you handle correctly.

Correct. When we had the computer nerds business down in Austin, we would, we found it worked for us. So we would tell people that our appointments would start at 10, 12, 2 and 4. Right. And it was our goal to arrive at the customers like, pretty much right on the money, you know, for that. And we were able to do it often enough that that worked for us. But if it got to be 11:30 and, you know, one of our nerds was, you know, at their first, at their 10 o' clock appointment and not finished yet, and knew that they weren't going to make their noon. At noon, the instruction was, stop for a moment, explain to the customer what you're doing, call the office, tell them, look, I'm here with, you know, so and so, and we're still working on this. I anticipate that we'll have this done within the next 45 minutes. I will call you in 45 minutes if that's not the case. Right.

Don't say it if you're not going to be able to do it.

But you just, you know, call the office and give the office that information. And then the office would communicate, communicate that to the customer. And yes, of course, the customer that was expecting someone at noon and being called to, to, you know, to, to be informed that now it's going to be, you know, noon, 30 or one. Usually we didn't just push it a half hour, we'd push it an hour at least, you know, but whatever, you know, we'd say, okay, it's not going to be noon, it's going to be one. We understand that this is disappointing, but the way we work is when we are there, we are there for you. And when we, when we get to your house, you're going to see this because same thing, right? You're going to get the same thing. You know, the 2 o' clock appointment is not the priority. When we're there working on you for your noon appointment or, you know, whatever that worked out to be.

You make them and you make them feel valued. And that's the great way to phrase it is like you're the priority when we're there and right now are, you know, we're over here trying to give that same level of service to the customer that was before you.

That was before you. Yeah, it just happened that they, they were before you. We didn't anticipate that, you know, they were going to take as long as they did. And. But it's like, that's part of the troubleshooting process. You don't know. It's fine. People are usually very understanding of that.

Correct. So my question is to you and to everybody is, why do these service companies fail at this? Over and over and over? Because this is the way when you talk to other people about their contractor, their pest guy, they're. Whatever, the painting guy, whatever, this is the topic. They don't show up. They come, they start, they leave, they do whatever. They're not on time. They said they were going to get here Monday. They don't come till Tuesday, till Wednesday, or they come late. I mean, this is an ongoing problem that constantly disappoints people. And I would suggest that if you're in that service business and you can find a way to communicate better and to react and solve this problem, you can be wildly successful. You don't have to do much more than this.

And we've already given you how. The instructions on how to do it. Like, we. Yes, we know how to do. It's totally doable. But I think. I think the issue is. And we'll talk more about this in a minute, but I think the issue is that when we're. When I'm choosing a service provider, I'm looking for someone that is competent to solve my problem. And if I am reading reviews or something, you know, or listening to people, if they say, well, yeah, you know, they're bad at communication, but, man, once they got there, they solved that problem. Like, that's the only part I hear, even though I know I'm gonna be frustrated by that, it's like, I'm already frustrated. I have a problem, right? So I'm like, well, whatever. Like, they. They know what to do. Their prices are good. Yep. Okay, well, that's great. I'll. I'll. I'll deal with it. And then you just deal with it. And I think that's part of the problem, is you can. You can run a successful business without this. And. And it's just the way human nature works. I, like, we all complain about it. Like, everybody that's listening here is nodding their head because we've all been through this, but we all tolerate it. Like, will I call this. You know, this was Irving, my oil company. Will I call them again? Yep, sure will.

Yes, you will.

Yes.

They know your system.

Yeah, exactly. That's. It is. Is the. The. The frustration of moving to someone else is higher than just dealing with, well.

Whatever, you know, well, and you. You're. I would say that your. Your experience with someone else is gonna. Would be very similar.

That's the thing. So I. Yeah, there's no reason.

You know, it's. Well, it's gonna be probably with these guys. They know my stuff, at least.

It's the devil I know.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, so it is interesting.

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That's awesome.

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This isn't a replacement for your periodic full eye health exam. Right. This is only testing that your current prescription still works for you and that you see 2020 with it. They told her to make sure she does the test with her current contacts in. So this is just to get, you know, over the hump of needing new context, which is something people have to do all the time. So really, really cool stuff. And.

And, yeah, you know, I was looking at the. Yeah, I was looking at their app on the App Store, and they have, like, over 3,000 five star reviews. It's pretty. Pretty insane.

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Me too.

And also for sponsoring this episode. All right, cool. You know, the Irving thing wasn't my only customer service disaster last week.

Yeah, imagine that.

Well, I had one with a company that I didn't expect to have a customer service disaster with. Although I have had, believe it or not, three separate incidents with this company in the last couple of weeks. Completely like, unrelated, separate things. And they've all gone worse. They used to. And this company, believe it or not, is Apple. We went to the store. My son's iPhone had an issue. And it. You would appreciate this, Shannon, because you used to be in this business, or maybe you've got a little PTSD from it, and you don't want to hear what the issue is. But it was this thing with the iPhone 7, some models of iPhone 7, Apple over did, like, the eeprom that's in there for the firmware updates. They reduced the tolerance on the EE part of it so that jailbreakers would have trouble actually getting the firmware ROM to erase itself so that you could put new firmware on there. And they overdid it because, of course, you know, with any security measure, the more locks you put on your house, the more keys you need to have to get in. And Apple overdid it and. And made it so that you couldn't even install Apple firmware on this device.

It was just, like, not good.

Couldn't write to it at all. So even though it was out of warranty, this is totally covered. It's published on their website. Whatever. So we just went into the store because we figured they'll just replace it right there. Fine, Great.

Did you make an appointment or you just rolled in?

Just. Okay, Made an appointment, got to the store. They, you know, they listened to what we said to them. They're like, you have described the problem Exactly. You are 100% correct. We just need to test it quick, you know, try to put firmware on there so we can see it before, you know, we move forward. I'm like, yeah, of course. No problem. So they did that. Took all of about eight minutes. They're like, yep, this is it. Unfortunately, this has to be sent to the depot. Do you. We can't do it right here in the store. Like, okay, fine, but whatever. They're like, do you want us to send it just straight to your house, or do you want us to send it back to the store and you can come pick it up? The store's, you know, 45 minutes away or whatever. Like, yeah, just send it to my house. That's fine. They're like, okay, no problem. So we went through the whole paperwork. They say it'll be there in three to five days. Great. We leave the store, we go home. Five or six days later. I was actually down in Austin at South by Southwest. My. My son texts me and says, hey, have you heard anything from Apple? Like, the phone hasn't shown up yet. Like, that's weird. So I start an online chat with them one night, like, late from my hotel room or whatever, and they're like, oh, yeah, you know, there's a problem with the serial number. What's the serial number of the device? I'm Like, I don't know. You have it. What's the problem? And it got really like, well, we'll figure it out. We've sent a note to the store or whatever. This was like, you know, six days later on a Wednesday or something that.

Saturday again, you had to call them.

I had to call them even though they had already identified this problem. Right. So then Saturday comes and I had a little more time in my hotel room. We heard nothing. Like, we just heard nothing. So I get the chat people on again and like, yeah, what's the serial number? There's an issue, like, what's going on here? And so finally, the people on the chat, this one woman that I had explained to me and my son. Oh, my son had been on chat with him the day before and they said it was all set, was going to be fine. It's like, yeah, but nothing. Like, we're not seeing any movement on this in the tracking system. So I don't think so. The woman said, yeah, yeah, the serial number. Like somebody fat fingered the serial number when they typed it in. And so it got to the depot and the depot people realized the paperwork doesn't match the phone match here. Like, and, and we need, like, we need the store to correct it. Like, well, you're holding the two things. Like, can't you just do it? And they said, we sent an email to the store on Wednesday. They still haven't replied. This is Saturday.

Wow.

Like, what? Okay, yeah, I'm like, okay. They're like, we need, at that point, they identified, like, we need somebody to call you. And basically what they said was, we need you to talk to customer relations. So. And I know, and as you probably do, Shannon, that at Apple, customer relations is sort of their escalated customer service. Some companies call. That's right, Office of the President, whatever. It's the customer service ninjas that are trained, you know, so that you could never, ever be angry with them. Like, they're the ones that say, hey.

We'Re just going to send you a new phone.

Yeah, they know how to fix this stuff. Yeah, that's right. Authority to fix it.

They have the authority. Correct.

But they also are just really good at empathizing with you and they will own the problem through the kid, through the thing. So I couldn't, just because of my schedule at that very moment in time, I couldn't get with them for about 24 hours. So I get with customer relations and they explain to me, they're like, the woman's like, oh, yeah, wow, we really screwed you on this? Like, yeah, well, that's good.

That's the first thing is, oh, we screwed up. Let's. Let's be accountable and take ownership of the problem.

Yeah, yeah. And she said that. She said, but here's the thing. I still have to talk to the store because repairs that come in through the store can't. Like. She said, if you had just sent this in to, like, Apple Care, she said, I could, like, completely take it over and own it, and I'd have a phone on its way to you tomorrow, you know, no problem. She said, but I can't do that because the store owns the store's repairs, even though they're being done by the depot. Like, oh, this is a. Okay, so this is, like, identifying the linchpin here, right? And she said, like, the store still hasn't replied to that email from five days ago. She said, so I'm gonna. I'm not gonna keep you on hold. She says, I'm gonna. You know, I'll call you back. I'll. I'm gonna call the store and get them to, you know, to, like, loosen this thing up. Like, wow, this is fascinating, you know. So she does. She calls me back, whatever, 20, 30 minutes later, she said, I got somebody at the store. I talked to whatever. She knew. She had names. She was giving me names. She was letting me peer behind the curtain as much with this. Again, well, you know, that makes you feel like having information is the key. Like, they had said many times, we're sorry we screwed up, but our policies are a little bit, you know, tight with this particular path we're on. So instead of just fixing it, we're trying to fix it. And in the process, we're letting you see what's going on because it makes you feel like, you know, you're not just in the dark anymore. And that actually went on for three more days. Like, wow, still never. Like, even though she talked to him at the store, they still never freed it up. They still never freed it up. They still never freed it up. And finally she said, okay, this has gone on long enough. I'm just gonna send you a phone. She said, I don't know what's going on with this repair. She said, I can tell you everything that I've seen so far, but this is ridiculous. And so they sent me a phone, and that phone arrived, let's say, on Wednesday. So it was, you know, a full two weeks later from the repair, but it finally showed up. Okay, great. And everything was fine. And. And then three days later, the original phone showed up at my house after the report got fixed. Yeah.

Nice.

Yeah, that's great. So. And I asked him, I said, you know, do you want me to send this back? They said, no, absolutely not.

Nice.

Yeah, no, like, she said it. That never should have been sent to you because it should have been stopped. But obviously no one here is paying attention, so you get to keep it. And as sort of a funny little aside, I had an extra iPhone 7 for about six hours, and then my wife put hers in the washing machine that evening.

There you go. It was meant to be.

It was meant to be. That's right.

Yeah.

But it was really interesting learning. Like, I mean, they handled it obviously terribly poorly in one way, but once they got somebody involved, they owned it and made me feel like I was important.

Yeah. And I think the lesson there is to. I do think sometimes things need to get escalated, of course.

Totally.

But if you empower your employees.

I.

Think correctly, you can avoid a lot of that, and a lot of it has to do with that, you know. Oh, well, that's our policy. That's our procedure. It's like, yeah, that is our policy. But if, you know, if. If the employee feels that you're going to have their back when they. When they come into your office and say, look, I know we don't normally do this, but let me explain why I did it. Yep, that. That's great. Because a lot of times you don't. You don't have to escalate it because they've handled it, they've taken care of it, and they feel comfortable doing it. And even if they did it wrong, I. Excuse me. I often tell them, hey, I may critique the way you did it, but I'm not going to be, you know, angry, or your supervisor or manager is not going to be angry that you. You went out of your way to solve the problem. And, you know, especially if, like, if it's something that's. That's a nominal thing. Like, look, I mean, we used to tell people, you know, if you have to give somebody a refund and it's, you know, up to 50 bucks, just do. Don't seek approval. Just do it and solve the problem and issue the refund while the customer's on the phone and make them happy.

And not like, that's the key is deciding for your business. And even just at different levels and for each level of employee how much freedom they have.

Autonomy.

Right. How much autonomy they have to fix a problem. And usually that can be done with a dollar amount like, okay, you've got got 50 bucks worth to solve this, or you've got 250 or you've got a thousand.

Yeah, whatever.

It is, whatever works for your company and for that, that, that particular level of employee and that sort of thing. It a, it, like you said, it makes the employee feel empowered, which can then make the customer feel important. Yes. And so empowerment equals importance. Right. Both for the employee and for the customer they're helping. And then, then it also saves you a ton of headache because can you imagine if everybody has to come to you to approve every hour?

It's a nightmare. That's right, it's a nightmare. Plus, I think it is really bad for your employees. Whatever you want to call it morale. When items get essay or things get escalated and you just say, okay, I'm going to do this, and there goes the policy out the window. Well, if you're constantly doing that for problem customers, why do you have the policy in the first place? And why is the, is the employee then trying to put up a barrier to, you know, to the customer and telling them, this is the way we do it and I can't overnight it or whatever, you know, in your particular situation and then when it gets escalated to you just to get rid of the problem, you say, okay, go ahead, you know, overnight it or give them the reset or do whatever, so let's just tell the employee to do it. And I, I would argue that most employees don't want to just give away the store. They feel like a little protective over the business. It's their job. They know the company has to make money, but people, if you hired them in the first place, they should have some good common sense and they should be able to solve that problem without having to escalate it. They'll feel better about themselves. The customer will feel like they're valued and they can got things taken care of quickly and the customer isn't used to it. The customer is ready for an argument. They are ready for you to say no. So when you say yes, they love you and they will reward you in their great reviews and they'll tell their friends and they'll even say, well, you know, I had a problem, but man, I was blown away by how quickly they took care of it. And you know, I'm always amazed at when you tell a customer, wow, that sounds like you had a really bad experience. Let me just give you all your money back. Most people say, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what I want.

That's not What I want. That's right. I just want my problem fixed.

Yes. And so you can, you can arrive at a, at a, at a, you know, something that's reasonable, and you just created a powerful cheerleader for your business. So use that, you know, as a tool for your employees. And they'll love it too, because they'll be like, wow, you know, I don't have to argue with this customer. You know, I can solve a problem right away.

Yeah, they can make somebo happy. Like, that's, we all love that.

Yes.

All of us. You talk about it. Yeah.

Or else you talk about it like we're talking about on the show when you don't get things taken care of correctly and, and you tell people, man, I just, I can't recommend these people because it was such a nightmare.

Yeah.

And, and they've achieved the complete opposite of. Even if they solve it eventually, you're so unhappy and frustrated with it, they take all the joy out of it. I, I, you know, I, I, I've been complaining to you about this new garage I've been having built for a year and a half, and with the contractor, by the end, I, I really said to the guy, I said, you know, you have sucked all the joy out of me building this structure.

That sucks, too, because you're not spending money and time. And yes, you had a vision, perhaps a shared vision with either your, your contractor, your architect, or your family. Whatever.

It was miserable.

It was miserable. And every time you think about it, it's like, oh, let's not go through that again.

Yeah, yeah, it's done. And I'm finally, okay, great. I get to, I got, you know, kind of what I wanted and this, that, and the other. But, you know, the guy, I, you know, it was miserable, and I told the guy didn't need to be this way. But anyway, so you can, I guess the moral of the show here today is, you know, set the right expectations for your customer up front and empower your employees to solve these problems on their own instead of having to delay and escalate and, you know, you'll, you'll be wildly successful, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't disagree. Yeah.

And we've got a few more stories, but we can save them for another show. Okay. We've ranted along, along enough today, and, you know, but it's, it's really important stuff, and it is part of your secret sauce to, you know, this kind of squishy things. People, people kind of say it's overrated, but it's not, it's not price. It's really wowing them in that customer service department. You got to have a good price to get their attention in the first place. But the follow up and that long term relationship with these customers is what is going to build this strong foundation for your business.

One thing, and I don't want to do it today because I kind of want to get your feedback as our listeners. But also I want us to think about this. What could be done to get another business to pay attention and fix this problem? And the way I'll turn that around is what would it take for you as a business owner to be motivated to fix this problem? Like would it, would it be bad reviews? But are the reviews bad? Because in all of these cases that we've talked about here, the project got finished. Things were good in the end eventually. But this frustration doesn't need to happen. Like we're all in agreement that, wow, that's crazy. Yeah, okay, they got it taken care of in the end. Like that, that's. Is that enough or. But it's not enough. It shouldn't be enough. Like customer service is important. So what would it take? Like how, how could, how could a customer impact or affect or even just, just nudge along some change to make this happen? I don't know. There's a magic answer to that. I think that's a very hard question to answer.

Yeah, it's a good, it's a great discussion to have and you know, we're going to post over in the Small@businessshow co Facebook and you know, we'd love to hear some stories about how you've handled this with your business or what sort of limits or non limits you, you know, you have on your employees. Yeah, it's a great topic to discuss and explore more. So we'd love to hear from you.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Go visit us. Like Shannon said, BusinessShow Co Facebook will get you over there and, and you can send us email if you want want feedback at business show. Love to hear from you.

Right on.

Keep living that charmed life, everybody. Take it easy. Shannon, take care.

You too.