Can You Keep a Promise?

Small businesses have many advantages over big business. Of course, a few big disadvantages too, but that’s a topic for another day.

One big advantage is being able to connect directly with customers and respond to them quickly and effectively. This enables businesses to build a more personal relationship with the customer. But it continually amazes me that so many small businesses can’t return a call, get back to you as they said they would and don’t even follow up when you’ve already agreed to do business with them.

We recently needed some garden maintenance done at home and the business we used did a reasonably good job. They followed up with us to see if we needed scheduled maintenance. It made sense, so we agreed a price and they turned up on time to complete the first month’s work.

Getting regular work from the same customer is the perfect scenario for a small business.

After all, it’s always better (and easier) to keep a customer than constantly searching for new ones. And, as I said, small businesses can excel at building on that relationship through reliability and quality work.

Our gardener missed a couple of small things but nothing major. We told him about this when he followed up to see if we were happy with his work. He took our feedback on board and said he’d fix those issues for free during the next visit.

All sound signs so far.

Then we didn’t hear from him. And we still haven’t. After doing all of the marketing and sales work to sign us up as a regular customer, he’s now unlikely to get any further work from us. We don’t think anything bad has happened but he’s not responding to our calls or emails. We think that most likely he has secured a bigger job that’s taking all his time. So he’s effectively burned us to hook a bigger fish.

We often experience this at EYEON Property Inspections when we engage other small businesses to help us with marketing, IT or digital services. They do a good job of explaining and selling their services but when you start to use them they fail to deliver what they promised.

And that’s the simple key to providing good customer service: Keep your promises.

If you just do what you say you’ll do, your business will be ahead of the pack. In some ways, it’s a poor reflection on most businesses that doing what seems obvious makes you better than average.

Small businesses should find it easier to keep their promises. Good customer service isn’t hard after all.

Best Regards,
Michael Ferrier

At EYEON Property Inspections, we help you buy and sell with more confidence.