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<\/a>True story.<\/p>\nAbout a year and a half ago, a spring broke on one of my garage doors. The company that installed it originally (before I owned the home) put a bunch of company stickers on the doors. Good move – I knew who to call. So, I made the appointment for 7 days later because they were so backed up, and came home from work to meet them on the scheduled day and time. I sat. An hour went by. I called. Yes they were sorry, but they got tied up, they will be there shortly. Ok. I sat. Another hour went by. No call from them, so I called. The happy message on the phone informed me they were closed. Sweet.<\/p>\n
So, the next day I called a competitor and had it fixed within a day.<\/p>\n
Fast forward 18 months. One of the doors needed a section replaced because the shoddy concrete work by those who built the house left a low spot right under the door that caused it to sit in water and resulted in the bottom of the door rusting away.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I wanted the same make of door so decided to call the original guys again and give them another shot. After all, s**t happens and maybe they just slipped a little last time. Lord knows I am not perfect. So I called, made the appointment and came home from work to meet them on the scheduled day and time. I sat. An hour went by. I called. Yes they were sorry, but they got tied up, they will be there shortly. Ok. I sat. Another hour went by. No call from them, so I called. The happy message on the phone informed me they were closed. Sweet.<\/p>\n
Ok, I am not the smartest guy in the world, but even I<\/em> am starting to see a pattern. These guys clearly need to work on their customer service plan \u2013 or probably more accurately, build one.<\/p>\n When I owned a service business, customers had a two hour arrival window. They were called 15-30 minutes prior to that window for an update on when we would arrive within that window so they would not waste any of their time waiting for us to arrive. In case you are wondering, this is to respect the customers time. They were then called again once we were on our way, or, if we did run into a snag that would delay us, we called them to inform them of that. If we missed the two hour window altogether they were given an instant discount \u2013 they didn\u2019t need to ask. This also served to proactively diffuse a situation where a customer might be upset because were late. By the way, we missed our window 4 times over the 5 years I ran that business. We never had a customer complaint related to our scheduling or keeping appointments. Not one. Our overall customer satisfaction rating was 97 %.<\/p>\n Compare that to the garage door company. At least with me, they are 0 for 2.<\/p>\n 100% failure rate.<\/p>\n Accordingly, at their request, I am 100% gone as a customer.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For more, visit billthorn.com<\/a><\/p>\n