Back to the Basics

My wife and I recently purchased a mountain cabin that needs a little fixing up.  Construction work and painting that I know better not to try to do myself if I want the job to look good.  What I’m finding frustrating is the lack of basic customer service by the companies that say they need work, and yet can’t even return a phone call or email.

Now granted the holidays may have diverted people’s attention, but for weeks I’ve been trying to line up people to work on this house.  I leave phone messages, and emails and I get nothing returned.  I know the economy is bad, and that the amount of work is minimal for some of these companies, so I’m stymied as to why the lack of responsiveness.

I’m working with a company right now that wants to improve customer service, and frankly they are making such a major project out of it that by the time they actually start training they could have been done already.  I have been trying to focus them on the basics, and finally made headway last week.

Do phone calls get returned in your company?

Do your emails get answered within the day?

Do you need to follow-up with people on a regular basis to get responses?

I asked these same three questions, and I encourage you to ask yourself the same ones.  If things are not going smoothly with the basics, can you imagine the difference if just phone calls and emails were answered?  Wow!  Do you really need a 6-month training program to improve customer service?

So as we begin 2012, I want to encourage you to get back to the basics of every process you want to improve this year.  Before you make a mountain out of a mole hill, take a step back and try something simple.

Advertisement