Delighting Your Customers

More often than not, I have found lately, more vendors don’t care about their customers. They want you to work with them, but little or no effort goes into it.

I often wonder why, in order to work with them, there is SO much friction and effort on my part and none on theirs. Is it hard?

A furnace guy comes to the house every summer to clean and inspect my furnace. Mostly it’s a preventative measure so that I do not go into the long New England winters with a known problem.

The furnace had his tag from the previous owner, and when we moved into the house, I called immediately. We scheduled an appointment, and he came and did his work and only asked me for my phone number. About six months later, Jon called me and wanted to set up an appointment for the following year. We scheduled a date, and I put it on the calendar. Jon has been my furnace man for 14 years now.

Win-Win

• He can predict his workload and schedule in advance
• He calls me a few days before the appointment as a reminder when he is coming and also gives me the amount of the routine service, so I can leave him a check if I am not there. (If there is unexpected work above the service fee, he leaves me the bill)
• I don’t have to think about the annual cleaning
• I do not have to be at the house during the service.
• Friction is removed from the experience.

Effort level: Simple Effective: High