Kudos – not

I got a recent email from a customer who we dropped the ball on. Although rare, when we fail to meet our customer’s expectations it always bothers me.

It is like getting punched in the gut. Some friends in other businesses tell me I take it too personally, but I ask them how can I NOT take it personally? It doesn’t matter that I only get one of these for about every 800 orders we get or that the effusively happy customer emails typically out number the butt kicking email by 100 to 1. It still hurts.

As I often say during training: “Even if we maintain our 0.5% fail ratio which is VASTYLY superior to the rest of the industry; for the folks that fall into that tiny ratio it feels like 100% to them.” It is personal to them. Working with people’s homes is a very big responsiblity.

The good news is once we get the wake up call we need we have a superlative group that I refer to as our “Customer Rescue Club.” They are brilliant! True empathy is the hallmark of this extraordinary group. Empathy combined with absolute commitment to rescuing our customers is the way the CRC lives everyday.

The CRC is such a core part of our commitment that I can’t imagine my life without them.