Are you yelp-proofing your practice?

The other day our washing machine decided it needed to go on vacation and stopped working. My wife called the service company we’ve used in the past and booked an appointment. They were due to come out today between 8 and 11.

My wife has a busy day today and called to see where we were in the queue. Yep, you guessed it, they had no record of the appointment.

It seems that their computer also needed a vacation and lost a bunch of bookings. They had no way of knowing who to call so it was a good thing my wife decided to call them. (They’ll be here later today).

What about the customers who don’t call to confirm? When the repair person is a no show do you think some of them might call another service? And then rip into them on review sites?

Yeah, I do too.

The company needs a fail-safe mechanism to minimize the risk of this happening again. How about something simple like instructing the person who answers the phone to write down the name and phone number of every caller, on paper, before entering the info into the computer?

Problem. Solved.

If I owned the company, not only would I implement this, I would make a point of dramatizing it in my marketing. In our ads, on our website, on the phone, I would explain that since computers have glitches and the Internet sometimes goes down, we use “double entry” appointments to protect our customers. Or something like that.

This may seem like a small point but marketing is about small points. Showing the world how you are different and better than the other guys by dramatizing the little things you do to give your customers a better experience.

I’m guessing this company won’t do any of this. They won’t apologize or offer us a discount or a freebie to make amends. But if they did, they would go a long way towards strengthening relationships with the people who not only pay their bills but who can recommend them to their friends.

Client referrals start with good client relations