How a small business can be huge
By Jon Swanson
On Wednesday night we picked up supper. On Wednesday night we got a call from the dishwasher installer.
I went to the website for the local restaurant (a four location local group). I went to the website for the national appliance chain.
I left a comment about the food, about this being the second time it’s happened. I talked about being a repeat customer, about wanting them to know.
I left a comment about dishwasher being late, about our install order getting lost. I talked about the eleven appliances we’ve purchased over 25 years from this chain, about wanting them to know.
And I went to bed.
On Thursday morning, I got an email from the restaurant. It told me that I would hear from the manager of store we visited. It was copied to the manager, to the two owners of the chain, and to a couple other people I don’t know.
At 1:30pm Thursday afternoon, I got a call from the restaurant manager. We talked. He made sure he understood the concern, didn’t offer excuses, told me what his followup would be. He offered to make it right, but I wasn’t looking for a free meal. I’d eaten the leftover pizza cold anyway. I just wanted to help a favorite eating place stay favorite.
I still haven’t heard from the national appliance chain.
The place we spent $12 called within 24 hours.
The place we spent $300 (and several thousand dollars over the years) hasn’t called yet.
And that’s how a small business can be huge:
Follow up.
And if you are ever in Fort Wayne, we can go to Casa. Becky did.
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Jon has been a regular reader and occasional contributor around here since 2006. Jon works as a pastor, but he understands business better than many so-called business people. He gets that it is about people, relationships, service, and yes, even love.
It always makes such a huge difference when someone follows up when they’ve done something wrong – and that small step can help customer loyalty much more than a lot of other customer retention strategies ever could. Good for that small local restaurant!
Such a great real world story.
Utilising technology for old fashioned service.
here’s my followup. After this post went up, I shared it via twitter with the unnamed company. I got a rely asking for a DM with more information. That led to an email and today, (the day after the post) to a phone conversation. They now know how to follow up on the problem.
And that was my concern. It’s a brand I care about. Their delivery process AND their complaint process weren’t working. So now many they will.
But it still took me working hard to complain in order to help them.