November 4, 2025

Hey gang, want to tell you about a customer service experience this morning that some of you may find helpful. You know, when I talk to audiences about this topic, I share with them how important it is to manage 3 things at the same time. You've got the technical delivery of your services or products, you've got the relationship with the customer/client, and then you've got the expectations of the customer/client. And your job is to manage all 3 of those things simultaneously if you want to deliver a world-class experience. Well, this morning I ran out of gas in my car, 100% my fault as the customer/client. I'm not upset about that at all. I then submit a ticket for my emergency roadside service to deliver fuel. All those interactions went great, no problem, you know, as far as just the pleasantness, the niceness. When the person finally got to my car with the fuel, he was super nice, kind, talkative, warm guy. No problems with the relationship piece. I mean, they managed the relationship really well, and honestly, At the end of the day, I got the fuel for my car. So, you know, I could argue that the technical delivery of what they were gonna provide was on point. They gave me what I asked for, right? The challenge was this morning was with the expectations because they didn't do a good job of managing my expectations. And then they did a really poor job of meeting those expectations when they didn't manage 'em well. So they originally said, hey, it's gonna be about 20 minutes from when I submitted the original request. That 20 minutes passed, no notification, no update. Updates. So they gave me an updated time about 15 minutes later. When that passed, they said it would be, you know, another 5 or 10 minutes, but I should be hearing from the driver soon. Never heard from the driver, you know, reached back out about 10 minutes later. Finally, about 30 minutes after the scheduled time had passed, they— the driver called me and said he was on his way. And then he said, I'll be about 5 minutes. But then the dispatch office texted me again to confirm that he had reached out. I said yes. And then they said, well, it'll be about another 15-20 minutes based upon our estimates before he gets there. So he told me 5, they're saying 15-20 minutes. Sure enough, it was about 15 or 20 minutes, he finally arrived. And my point is, is that, you know, the fact that it took a total of 90 minutes to get me gas, I'm not really that bothered by that. I mean, it's 2025, we expect everything to be done overnight, you know, instantly. But the reality is things take time, right? The problem was is that they originally said 20 minutes from my request time, and it wound up being hour and a half. And then when they finally did notify me, the driver did, it still was not— he still basically overpromised, right? 5 minutes, it was gonna be another 20 minutes. So my frustration over the 90 minutes of waiting for my fuel was not about the fact that it took 90 minutes, it's the fact that it originally was only going to take 20 minutes and then it wound up taking 90 minutes. And along the way, there was very poor communication about when it was actually going to be delivered. So as you're out there today working on delivering world-class experiences, don't just Don't just focus on making sure you deliver the right service and product, and don't just focus on being nice and kind and pleasant and warm with your clients and customers, but focus on managing their expectations. And if you don't do anything else, make sure you under-promise and over-deliver. That's always going to be a better strategy than over-promising and under-delivering. Hope this helps you out there today.