Learning from a not-so-good customer survey

We send out a customer survey at the end of each and every job that we do. The information that we receive is invaluable in helping gauge our level of customer service. I just received a survey back from a customer on a small wood railing repair job. Now we don’t normally do this type of work but it was a friend of a friend and the job seemed easy enough. Nothing that we couldn’t handle. Unfortunately, that’s the wrong thinking in this situation!

First, I definitely mis-estimated the job. We went way over budgeted hours which actually caused us to pay to have to do this job. This is not something that happens often here (thank goodness!) but it does occasionally. I’d be a liar if I said that it didn’t. Luckily, it is normally a very small job such as this (this one was under $1,000). And it shows me that I really have to watch my numbers and my estimates. And the type of jobs that I take on!

When we finally finished the job, we sent out our normal thank you letter along with a customer survey. Now you would think that we would have done a bang up job for this customer and he was ecstatic. Far from the truth as I found out when he returned the survey!

You see, he liked the salesperson (me) and our office staff but was not happy with the production on this job. This perplexed me since our best carpenter and best painter worked on this job! Of course, I was still suffering from the sting of the job cost report which showed a negative profit, so my first instinct was to blame production. The customer had some very specific issues and listed them in the survey.

Luckily, the customer also called me the day he mailed the survey to me. I say luckily because I would rather someone tell me they have an issue and allow me to fix it then to not tell me and let it eat away at them. Then they have a tendency to tell their friends what a horrible job we did. I don’t know about you but I don’t like or need negative pr from my customers. I want happy customers who love us.

Anyway, that prepared me for the negative survey but it also gave me the opportunity to sit back and think about the job and what could have gone wrong. I already knew that I had under-estimated the hours required for the job. What else could have gone wrong? I wondered if this was an existing condition that the client found, something that we did not touch in our work.

I sent our carpenter out to check on the job and meet with the customer. Sure enough, the major item in question was something that was done by the original builder of the home and was not in the scope of our work. The minor item in question, some touch-up painting, was definitely something we should have taken care of at the time. We quickly cleared up the confusion and scheduled the touch-up painting with the customer.

And do you know what the customer said at the end of the meeting? He said, “I’m sure glad that this wasn’t something you did. You have restored my faith in your company!”

Now I have a happy customer, albeit at the expense of my job numbers. But as I see it my job numbers looked bad right from the start, I just didn’t know it yet.

Some things I learned and re-learned from this job:

• Check my estimated labor hours carefully. And if I’m not sure, add more.
• Respond quickly to an unhappy customer.
• The customer isn’t always right but I don’t have to tell him that up front!
• When the customer isn’t right, I have to be diplomatic in telling him so.
• Production isn’t always to blame.
• Instruct production to search for existing conditions on a job.
• Instruct production to point out existing conditions to clients right away.
• Give the client the opportunity to add to the scope of the work, if they so choose. Always in writing with an Additional Work Authorization, of course.
• Schedule any necessary follow-up work immediately.
• Follow-up with the customer to make sure they are happy.
• Even if you don’t make your numbers on the job, you must still provide excellent customer service. It is not the customer’s fault that you messed up!