Promises, Promises, Promises

 

Under Promise-Over Deliver That should be the motto of every business that wants to achieve great customer standards.

What does this mean? In a nutshell, make sure that you make promises you can keep. Make sure you keep your promises.

Can you relate to these stories? 1. Martha brought her car in to have the oil changed. The service advisor told her it would only take ½ hour. 1 hour later, Martha is now late getting back to work and still in the waiting room at the service garage.

2. Stan brought his car in because it had a whine in the engine area. The service advisor said it would be $35 to diagnose the problem and it should take about 1 hour. Three hours later the service advisor finally comes back to the waiting room telling Stan that the car is already fixed but the total of the bill is $250.

Enough picking on service garages, how about contractors as an example.

3. Sally signed a contract with her contractors thinking that she would outsmart them. Well, it didn't matter. The contractors were three weeks overdue in coming to add on to her house. She kept calling and leaving messages. She never received a reply until the day they finally showed up to do the work. Of course, by the time they showed up she couldn't get off work to make sure they were doing the job correctly. She was so upset; she wanted to scream at the contractors. Instead, she didn't say much, as she figured she should just be lucky they were there at all. When she asks the contractor why they weren't there, they casually reply that they are over booked, etc.

Now, I have no intention of implying that there is a problem with service garages or contractors in general. There is example after example from all types of businesses that I could go on about and give you first hand explanations of customer expectations that were not met. This makes for an upset customer that probably will not return to your business, and worse yet, tell many people about their bad experience.

How can you achieve great customer satisfaction? Under promise, over deliver.

For example, lets examine example number 1. What if the service advisor would have told Martha upfront that they were behind and the oil change couldn't be done in ½ hour? Instead it may take 1-½ hours to complete. Would she like to reschedule, or get a ride back to work, or use a phone? Martha may have decided she could use the phone and let work know that she would be late in returning to work. Then when the service advisor returned to the waiting room in 1 hour instead of 1 ½ hours, Martha would have been very happy and probably thought that the service advisor pushed her car through faster because the service advisor knew of her problem getting back to work late. Now she would have been a very happy, satisfied customer even though things took longer than they usually do.

Now let's look at example number 2. What do you think is the problem? The time it took to diagnose the problem, or the $35 bill that turned into a $250 bill? Well, both are the problem. Believe it or not, this could have also been handled differently to have a happy customer. The service advisor could have let Stan know after 1 hour that they were either still having problems diagnosing the car, would Stan like them to continue? Or that they found the problem and this is the estimate to repair the problem and the amount of time it would take to repair the problem (if you know it will take 2 hours to repair, tell the customer 3 hours that way if something goes wrong, you are still covered and if nothing goes wrong, you can exceed the customer expectations), would Stan like them to repair the car today, would he like to wait, get a ride, etc.

Example number 3 is very easy to avoid. Even if you do find yourself overbooked communicate with the customer. I cannot stress this enough. The contractor could have called a few days before they were due at the house to start the addition and let Sally know that they were overbooked and they would get to her ASAP. They understand how they messed up her schedule and are truly sorry. Then if they are not there the next week, at least call and explain that she is still in line and not forgotten about. When the contractor actually shows up for the job, the customer may be a little disgruntled that they are late, but the customer most likely understands and is appreciative of their honesty.

Now you may be lucky and be having a great day at work. No one is running behind, you have all the supplies, you are not short of personnel today, etc. Let's say that you are the service advisor, would you still offer the oil change done in ½ hour? If you answered yes, wrong! Why? Because anything can still go wrong, what about the time it takes to get the customer information and have the customer pay. This all takes time. The customer perception is that they can come in and get out of the service garage for an oil change in ½ hour period. It may only take ½ hour for the actual servicing of the car, but there is more to it. Now, if you set the customer up for 1 hour and the customer is in and out in ½ to ¾ of an hour, they are happy.

Think of times in your own business that could be handled differently. Are there times when there was an upset customer that if presented in a different manner, the customer would have left happy? How about routine products or services that are performed, you probably know exactly how long something takes to do. If something normally takes 1 hour, tack on 15 minutes to ½ hour for the customer. So you can exceed the customer expectations. If you are estimating something for a customer, you truly believe the total should be $150, before you give $150 as the estimate, you may want to tack on $25 just for incidentals that you didn't think about. If is always better to come under an estimate than go over. Again, you would be exceeding the customer expectations.

I hope the examples have helped illustrate what I mean by under promise, over deliver. Always make sure you make promises you can keep. Keep your promises.