People desire to be appreciated and acknowledge.
If you simply appreciate and acknowledge people – you will make them happy.
Your job as a service provider is to make people happy. Yet the majority of people in the business I’ve spoken to fail to realize their most important function is to make the customer happy. You don’t need to give FREEBIES, or do unusual things in order to make customers happy. If you simply appreciate and acknowledge them, they will be happy. It’s the easiest way to defuse a potential problem.
Case in point. Today, I received an e-mail from the stage company we’ve been dealing with for the pass 4 years which tested my patience as a customer. As the organizer of this community event, we’ve hired them every year to create an outdoor stage for us and they’ve been excellent.
But this year, their set-up crew arrived late as per the time specified in the contract. They also took their time setting up, causing my programming to be delayed. When I mentioned this to the crew, they proceeded to give me excuses defending their lateness and even tried to tell me they were not late until I showed them the time. Fail!
When their customer service rep e-mailed me the invoice, I thanked her and lightly mentioned that their set-up crew were late. She e-mailed me back and said something like “if you have any concern, you should contact the sales rep”… “sometimes, unforeseen circumstances occur…” etc. You get the picture.
I didn’t have the intention to file a complaint, just casually mentioned it so they are aware of it. I also thought they would appreciate the feedback giving them a chance to correct it. But her indifference made me angry. So I quickly drafted a complaint and fired it to the sales rep who were handling our account.
What happened here?
1. She did not appreciate my business nor my effort to report a tardy unsupervised personnel that could eventually ruin their company.
2. She did not acknowledged my concern, but tried to minimize it.
If she had simply said something that made me feel appreciated and acknowledge the problem, then promised to take it up with a manager, I would have been as happy as a bee. Instead, they got a full blown complaint that they now have to deal with.
Sometimes, the easiest thing to do is the right thing.
