I Failed. Miserably!
Let me pull back the wizard of oz curtain here for all my awesome readers.
I’m not perfect!
In fact, I make mistakes all the time. I’m human.
As business owners we often make mistakes. It’s the learning the comes from those mistakes allow for perpetual growth! I never have an issue with mistakes, cause I know I’ll learn something from them. I just ensure to put things in place (like a process) so that I don’t make those mistakes again.
Nonetheless, I made a big mistake recently.
I forgot to buy oil! Now..in New England, many homes are heating with home heating oil. Generally speaking, there is a 250-gallon tank in, the home that holds this oil, and when it runs out, the furnace won’t run. Simply put, it’s like running out of gas in your car. However, my error came on a very cold night.
I returned home around 9 pm to find it was very cold inside. The thermostat showed about 64, I turned it up, but nothing kicked on. “Oh no” was my first thought. I immediately ran to the basement to verify my concern, yep…I was out of Oil.
So, we started calling all the local oil companies, including the one I use the most. My oil company didn’t offer 24/7 service, so I left a message hoping for a callback, and in the meantime, we kept calling around.
Time after time, we would get the oil company on the phone, knowing that they offered 24/7 emergency oil delivery and they would ask if we were a customer. When we replied no, they would tell us that they do not deliver after hours to people that are not customers. None of this was detailed on their respective websites. It created a sense of angst. What started to show was a theme, that we only care about our customers, not our future customers!
Eventually, we found a company to deliver oil that night. They said they could be to the house in an hour, that we had to pay an additional $110 delivery fee, and that we had to pay cash. No problem! Cmon over I said!
Now who do you think I refer when someone needs oil?
The one that delivered…and over delivered in this case!
Be careful how your company policies might exclude new prospects from becoming new customers!
“But you aren’t our customer” never results in more word of mouth referrals. In fact, it feels just like a punch in the face!