Our angels and…Take ten minutes…

Our angels and…Listening to them

While it’s certainly not a regular occurrence, once in a while we have the pleasure of experiencing an account we lost a few months ago coming back hat in hand. The question is how to handle it.

It’s certainly understandable that with our still raw feelings our darker angel side would love to say something along the lines of “I told you so”.

But that path – no matter how much we’d love to go down it, is a dark unhappy road. Clearly the better approach is to pay heed to our better angel by sincerely thanking them for calling us to again serve their needs. But yet we’d sure like to know why they left us and then why they reached out.

So, after we’ve wrapped up the reinstallation, we could ask what caused them to both make the change and, in the end, call us back. For example we could ask what the competitor did wrong – or failed to do. Was it a promise of better costs or results? Were our results, costs or service the issue that led them to make the change?

That step approach does two important things: First it lets them know that we still appreciate their business. Secondly those questions might just expose an area where we were either legitimately coming up short – or where we’d just done a poor job of promoting what we had been doing.

Next up: Pealing the banana.

Take ten minutes…or maybe more

Yes, service reports can serve an important forensic purpose when they’re used to document all the great service we’re delivered. But in truth the greater value and importance of those reports lie much more in the here and now than what we did last month.

Taking the time to accurately document both the services we’ve rendered today and perhaps drawing attention to areas where management could influence the operation are its’ real value.

And the few minutes it takes to review what you might have spent the last hour addressing is exactly the kind of self-promotion that the doctor ordered!

That time taken to document issues like the operator’s failure to regularly drain and refill the wash tank – or in that laundry addressing how overstuffing the wheel is affecting results – can do much to ensure great results and optimize costs.

But most importantly those reports can go a long way toward giving you a satisfied customer who understands what you do for them. And that outcome really can’t be overstated.