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Between 11 and 12
By Dave Henderson
Thursday, November 15, 2007
A pet peeve of mine is punctuality. Maybe it comes from my upbringing; my parents taught me to respect others time. Maybe it's from my time in the military; anyone who has served in the military can tell you about the consequences of being late. Later in the business world, I observed "professionals" who were always late — late for the start of business in the morning; late for the first meeting with customers; and late for the last appointment of the day as well.
Sometimes things happen that are out of your control that will make you late, however common courtesy has always made it necessary for me to call and say I'm going to be late. After all, how valuable is your time? To me it is very valuable, yet some folks have zero respect for other's time.
Most all of us have been told at one time or another that the new widget would be delivered between 2 and 5. Most all of us have found ourselves waiting well past the time window that was committed to by the business. Well today for me it was an appointment with Servpro. Within 30 minutes of finishing with my insurance adjuster yesterday, I received a call from Servpro to set up an appointment to do the estimate on the smoke remediation from the fire. The woman confidently told me they would be here between eleven and twelve.
I thought to myself, "Wow! Only an hour time window, that's nice." After all that is in the middle of the work day and I have things to do.
Well, to good to be true. Twelve rolls around and no Servpro.
1:00 pm rolls around and no Servpro.
1:30 pm and not even a phone call.
By 2:00, my wife gets home and still no Servpro. I'm two hours overdue at the office; meaning, I'M LATE!
Why is it that this is now the norm in "Customer Service" today? From the automated phone system that will not let you talk to a real person to the delivery of the new TV and the repair of the phone. The doctor that is running an hour and a half late. The "please hold for the next available customer care representative".
We all have a finite amount of time on this earth. When a business cannot show even a basic respect for their customer's time, I question if they deserve our dollars! They are now three and a half hours late and not even a phone call.
Just to update the story, they never did show up or call.
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Dave Henderson is the Vice-President of Operations for RIMOFTHEWORLD.net and it's parent company Vicinitas, LLC. Dave is the commercial and operational manager for the site.The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of RIMOFTHEWORLD.net. This column is copyrighted by Dave Henderson.
