And I need a car wash to boot!
I am going to take this analogy and run with it. Stay with me here. I promise there is a point (somewhere.)
I can’t begin to explain to you the trouble I have had with the reception on my new iPhone 4. When a call comes in and I am in the Tiny Business, Mighty Profits HQ office (downstairs in my house) I have to jump up and run for high ground like a native islander fleeing from an incoming tsunami.
It is awful.
And… yes… occasionally… since I am a web developer… and Internet marketer, I occasionally need to be in front of my computer (which is in the basement dead zone) when I am speaking with customers. [Please insert as much sarcasm as you can muster into that previous sentence.]
So I made an appointment with the Genius Bar at the Apple Store to discuss the reception problem.
The man at the Apple store (and I assume he was towing the company line) proceeded to throw AT&T under the bus:
“It is not our fault that too many people are pulling data through AT&T’s 3G network.”
Apple is a brand that is built on the premise that you shouldn’t settle for anything less than the best. And it’s worth paying the extra money for the best in class.
This reception blunder is going to do more damage to the Apple brand than Albert Pujols did to Brad Lidge’s career in Game 5 of the 2006 NLCS. They will surely come back from it but they will be messed up for a while.
The AT&T 3G Network may indeed be sadly over capacity — I don’t know. I don’t care. And neither does any of their other customers. All they (and I) know is that the phone doesn’t work.
Fix it.
Own up to the problem and fix it. That is all we care about.
I walked out of the Apple Store and headed over to Five Guys Burgers and Fries (death to any diet or exercise program but mighty tasty.) I was replaying my conversation with the Apple dude in my head and it just seemed so UN-Apple.
I grabbed my grease burger and headed out to my car to consume this 3,000 calorie delight because I wanted to listen to the Cardinal game on the radio.
As I was digging in to my lunch, a man came and knocked on my car window (scared the bejesus out of me) and let me know that he had given my car as he described it “a hell of a door ding.”
He thought I might want to report it to my insurance company and he handed me his insurance card. I hadn’t noticed the ding because I was thinking about what I was going to do to that burger, but it certainly was “one hell of a ding.”
I stepped out of my car and wiped some ketchup from my upper lip and said to him:
“Thanks for owning up to it.”
How can you apply this to your tiny business? How do you go about handling it when you screw up? What advice do you have for the rest of us?
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh Russ…not your new car??!!! and did you really have to eat “the whole 3000 calorie burger?
”…but seriously…I understand what you have said in this post. i have found that you are 100% right, a customer does not care about the reasons for any less than expected delivery, they care about what you as a business plan to do to fix the problem. After working a short stint in corporate America, no less the customer service department where I discovered that NO ONE is responsible for much…especially if the “much is a negative”. I can happily reply that I am delighted to be a tiny business owner and have the ability to remedy any problems that may arise between my customer and my company.It may not always be easy to work out a resolution, but it is the right and best thing to do!
thanks for reminding of one more reason to love being a tiny business owner!
jennifer
@jennifer — yes it was my new car and yes I had to eat the entire 3000 calorie burger. It was delicious!
Your comment is very thoughtful and reminds me of a post that I wrote that talks about customer service and owning a tiny business. My point in that post was that (because you as the tiny business owner) are the main decision maker, you cannot “cop out” and tell people that “this is just company policy and there is nothing that can be done.”
As a tiny business owner you can have policies and procedures but the customer always knows that they are dealing with someone that can make exceptions to all of those rules.