Kenny Chapman shares a story about a pizza place in Newport Coast where a broken printer left customers waiting without knowing what was happening. He argues that businesses should tell customers upfront when something goes wrong, not stay silent. Early honesty keeps loyal customers coming back.
Hey, everybody, Kenny here just want to touch base on some thoughts. Let me turn the music down. Christy's shooting me here in the car as we're heading. We got a little sunset in Huntington beach, but we had a, we had a lunch today at one of our favorite pizza places in the world, and it's down in Newport Coast, California. And interesting thing happened. We, we love the product, we love what they do for the pizza, we love how they handle everything, and yet we had, like, terrible service. And we're just like, my gosh, why, why are drinks taking so long? I had a hard scheduled call that I was watching the clock on. We thought, oh, well, we'll have plenty of time to get there. It's taking time. Taking time. Why is that? And so, lo and behold, at the end of the situation with our server, he was a great guy and he was nice and all, but he came, he comes by and he goes, hey, just so you know, thank you so much for your patience. We've had issues with our printer, therefore we can't, like, print tickets. So I wasn't able to print your drink tickets, I wasn't able to print your pizza tickets. And he calls it a, what do you call that? What do you say, Christy? His mindset or his. The way he has some great memory normally. Yeah, he's had some great memory thing that he had a label for of how he normally remembers tickets. And we all see great servers that do this and we get that right. But he lost that. And here's what I want us to realize as contractors in this space, as customer service agents, is the fact that, why didn't he bring that out earlier? Give your clients the information that they need to make a good buying decision. We were there for the product because we've been there before. We were there because we're high level, repeat customers that, that really believe in what they do. But we're sitting there seriously going, I don't know if I'm going to come back here. Until he came back and told us the technology challenges that they were having. Did we say, okay, maybe we do want reconsider this and maybe we will come back? What if you came out earlier and told your client the truth and here's the reality, here's the situation. We've got printer problems. I can't print tickets right now. I'm so sorry for the inconvenience. I appreciate your patience in advance because today is not a normal day. Thank you so much for coming in. I'll give you a free sparkling or whatever the case might be, how could we do something like that? Bring it up sooner? They almost lost clients that not only talk about them, but refer them because they didn't communicate. Think about that with your clients. Think about that with the people that want to do business with you and how can you make that better? Think about that for your space, for the clients that you have. If it's service agreement clients, I don't care. If it's trying to attract new clients, communication is king. I'm Kenny Chapman, the blue collar coach coming to you from the PCH in Huntington Beach. Until we talk again, have a better than fantastic day and I'll talk to you soon.
