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Don’t promise your customers what you won’t deliver!
By Lauren | March 5, 2008
A friend’s recent hospital stay provided an unfortunate example of how not to treat your customers and clients. My friend, who had been sick with an especially nasty strain of the flu, was hospitalized for about a week with the expectation that he would be transferred to a rehabilitation facility following his hospital stay. That’s when the trouble began.
My friend was allegedly assigned a hospital caseworker to monitor his progress and handle his transfer to the rehabilitation facility. I say “allegedly” because the caseworker never came to see my friend, never returned the multiple calls he left on her answering machine, and never responded to any of his several attempts to page her. My friend also had an assigned nurse, a cheerful young woman who promised several times to check on the last test that needed to be run before he could be transferred and to keep the rehabilitation facility informed of his whereabouts. As far as we could tell, however, she only promised to make calls. When we checked independently with the rehabilitation facility, they had no record of any word from the hospital. My friend could have lost his bed in the rehabilitation facility if another friend hadn’t called repeatedly to keep the staff there updated on his progress. He ultimately made it to the rehabilitation facility, but his confidence in the quality of care delivered by the hospital was severely shaken.
Hospitals may be able to get away with dropping balls and breaking promises because the services they provide are so essential. Let’s face it: if you’re sick enough to need the hospital, you’ll go there whether you’re happy with the quality of care you’ve previously received or not. For companies whose customers are in less desperate straits, however, a pattern of non-responsiveness and broken promises is a great way to lose business.
The lesson here is a simple one. If a customer is counting on you to get a job done, either do it or tell the customer why you can’t. And, if you’ve promised to do something, get it done. Anything else is just bad business.
Topics: Business Ethics, business communications, customer relations |