So I contacted a bloke about fitting some new guttering all around my house.
Nice chap. He turned up and gave me a price quote and I said I’d contact him the next day letting him know whether the price was acceptable and whether to go ahead with the job.
Which I did…
He then promised me he’d contact ME the following Monday (this was Friday) letting me know when he’d arrive to start work.
Three weeks passed without any contact from him…
If I’d been a more organised person I’d have got someone else in to do the job before winter arrived and the English rain started hitting my rotten old wooden gutters and began leaking down the side of my house.
But I was doing other things and I didn’t
Yesterday he phoned me to say he’ll be starting work tomorrow.
He sounded genuinely shocked when I said he couldn’t because we were having some other work done on the roof and he’d have to wait until that was finished.
I almost told him where to shove his guttering because I was angry at being ignored for three weeks when I was hiring HIM.
And as a customer I’m now officially BUGGED at this bloke for not keeping me in the loop.
His assumption is that I don’t need updating on the status of a job I’m paying several hundred quid for.
Am I not important enough in the equation to warrant this information?
Does he care so little about my life that any plans that I may have are unimportant in comparison to his work?
Of course he didn’t do it on purpose – he simply didn’t even think about it.
But that’s how it felt to me…
I’ve just brought in a new rule for my support people that if we can’t fix the issue with any customer support tickets within 24 hours (which we usually do) then we at least CONTACT the customer to let them know what’s going on,,,
Making your customer feel important and involved is a big part of the sales process.
Ignore it at your peril
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I completely agree!
And it isn’t even difficult to set up a system to manage these things: A simple Google Calendar will do for most small businesses. Just plot in when you want to give your customer an update or follow up with them.
It works great when for planning when you want to send out a newsletter, do accounting, review your AdWords campaign, pay a bill, post on your Facebook page etc.
The possibilities are endless. And best of all: It’s free, simple and very easy to implement.
If you are interested in reading more about excellent customer service I highly recommend Hug Your Customers by Jack Mitchell. Had to ration the book when I read it to avoid going through the whole thing in an afternoon.