What Not To Do If You Get It Wrong For A Csutomer

Hi everyone and welcome to Talking Points Live with me, your host, Jason S. Bradshaw. Just a friendly reminder, you can subscribe to my fortnightly newsletter, talking points on LinkedIn and also my website, Jason S. Bradshaw. Now, last week I gave my views on how to manage a crisis and I used the real life example of Optus losing their network coverage nationwide. Now, there's been a lot of commentary about this, and I'm not going to bore you with more commentary about it today, but I've recently had another experience with a small business that reinforces to me a couple of points. And the first point that it reinforces with me that I think is really important for you to understand, whether you're a solopreneur, whether you're a owner or an entrepreneur in a mid sized business or a small business, or if you're the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, is that customers don't judge their experience with you against their last transaction with you, but rather through the lens of the best experience that they've ever had. You see, each of us in business, each of us as individuals, are consistently creating expectations in, in the minds of our customers and of our colleagues. So when I'm doing business, when your customer's doing business with you, they're judging you based on what they perceive to be a great experience. So let me give you an example. Recently, and when I say recently, over four weeks ago now, I reached out to the pool services company that services my mother's pool and they've been doing so for five years. And I would like to say for five years I've been a happy customer, but I certainly have not been. And this just reinforces why I would love to try a different company. Now, the reasons I don't try another company is also probably the same reason why their service standards are so pitiful. But at the end of the day, you could say, well, you work in customer experience and business growth, so you probably are a little bit more critical than the average Joe. Well, I would say that the average Joe is probably as critical, if not more critical than me because they're looking at it through their own lens, their own desires and wants. But fundamentally, I think we can all agree on one thing. When you do business with a company, you want them to get it right. Simple as that. Right? But what do you do when you get it wrong? As a business owner, as a business leader? What I'm telling you today is the wrong thing to do is what this pool services company did for me. Now, it's a small Independently owned franchise. But because they're part of a franchise, they've obviously got processes and training. So in some ways they, they're better equipped than just a solopreneur. However, what they've got wrong, I just hope is not part of their processes. So over four weeks ago, I reached out to the company, said there was a problem. They gave me a quote to fix the problem. I accepted the quote. And then they scheduled the fix and didn't turn up. They didn't tell me they didn't turn up. So then I get a call from my mother. I reach out to them and say, what's going on? You were meant to be there to fix it. They reschedule, they don't turn up again. I reach out and say, what's going on? They reschedule. This time they turn up and I happen to be at her property and I have a few conversations, just random conversations with the service technician and then he disappears. A couple days go by, reach, my mother reaches out to me again to tell me the pool still not fixed. So I reached out to the company and said, the pool's still not fixed. Why is this so difficult? And their response was, we left a note to tell you we couldn't fix it. We have to come back. I'm like, you didn't leave a note. Number one, I was there. Number two, you didn't leave a note. Where did you leave the note? No reply to my request about where they left the note. They rescheduled, they come out again and don't fix the pool. And apparently today they're coming out to fix the pool again and they're sending someone else. Now, I've had excuses from, we ran out of time to, we needed to do this before we could do that. Well, the reason you had to do this was because you didn't fix it in the first place. Like, how is this news to you? You're a pool services company. My point here is this. If you make a commitment to a customer and you can't deliver on, is not the customer's job to keep chasing you. It is your job to keep communicating with the customer. You see, as this story goes on, as this journey goes on, I and other customers like me do a couple of things. First of all, we start to wonder if we made the wrong decision, can I really trust this company to do what I need them to do? And that leads to a second action, which is to reach out to other companies to provide the services. Now, in this case, I've reached out to other Companies, however, they're completely busy, they're over subscribed, they. They can't take on or don't want to take on more customers just yet. So I'm left in this conundrum. Do I keep battling out with this company that clearly doesn't care about my lifetime value as a customer or me as a first time customer if it was the case because they failed to communicate? Or do I find another alternative? Perhaps it's the safety net of knowing that they've got a captive market that leads them to think it is okay to deliver a bad experience and a bad service. If you want to. If you want in your business breakthrough success, don't do what this pool services company done. If you want breakthrough business in your breakthrough success in your business, then it's really simple. If you can't get it right for your customers the first time, there's a couple of things that you need to do. Four things in fact. First, you need to communicate to the customer what went wrong and what the next steps are with a clear date on when you're going to follow through with them. You need to communicate with your customer how you're going to minimize the inconvenience to the customer. You'll note in the story that I shared with you. Not once, not once did they try to make it right. Not once did they even try to come up with an interim solution. And then the third thing is you've got to make it right. It's no good promising to make it right and then failing to turn up now. Okay, it's a small business. Things happen. Maybe the second time they didn't turn up was, was okay, maybe, but they didn't communicate. So that's a fail in my mind. But I know when I owned a carpet cleaning and pest control business, I can assure you I hated going and doing some jobs. But if we had people turn up unwell, or if we had technicians turn up unwell, or they went to a job and things couldn't be done, or even worse, have a technician turn up to a job and refuse to do it, then at times I had to jump in the car and go and do it myself. And I don't care what size business you are, the bigger you are, you have less excuse. In my opinion, you need to find a way to make it right for your customer. And then the fourth thing that you need to do after you've made it right for your customer is follow up with them and ask how you can make things better. How can you restore the Trust that has been eroded. Now, this company, like I said, five years, over five years, they've been taking money from my bank account every month for over five years, and then some months more than once. Because, you know, you buy that thing and you do that upgrade, I'm sure my lifetime value as a customer is significant for them. And yet right now it's 1221, and I still don't know whether they're on route, whether they've been there and fixed the problem or what's going on. And it's really baffling because today there are tools out there that can make most of that automated, most of that communication automated. When I was getting window tinting done on the house, I got a text message the day before saying, your technician, your service installation technician will be there tomorrow between these times, and then 30 minutes before they turned up, I got another message to say, they're on their way, they're 30 minutes away. Now, if a windows servicing tinting company can do that, then a pool servicing company can do that. What I'm saying is there are tools there to help you do the four critical steps that will ensure that as a business you have breakthrough success even when you didn't get it right the first time. Those four things, just as a reminder, can communicate to customers when something went wrong, why it went wrong, and what you're doing to fix it and by when. Second, communicate what you're going to do to minimize the impact to the customer. Third, make it right and make it right fast. And four, follow up afterwards to start restoring the trust and the relationship and find ways that you can make it better. So don't just make it right, make it better. I'm Jason S. Bradshaw. You can contact me at Jason Sbradshaw on all social networks and of course through my website, Jason sbradshaw.com if I can help you or your business have breakthrough success, please feel free to reach out.