As a person who trains customer service I am always aware of the level of service I receive everywhere I go. I always believed it was mainly because of my occupation that I had noticed a continual downturn in this area but earlier in the week a friend of mine was telling me a recent ordeal she had endured.

She had ordered an item of furniture from a store and was told it would take 2-3 weeks for delivery. The salesperson assured that they would call and advise an exact date in the next few days.

3 weeks later she called the store to find out which day that week it would be delivered and was told they would let her know but it should be sometime in the next week, but they would call her as soon as they knew something. 10 days later she called back again, this time she was getting a little upset, and was told the salesperson would call her back.

When the salesperson called her back the next day she was told it would be another 2 weeks. This was her last straw and she fought hard and eventually received a refund.

In our discussion she wasn’t upset at having to wait 6 weeks for her furniture, she is very aware that sometimes it can take 3 months for furniture. Her upset was in 2 areas.

The first of these was that she was told 2-3 weeks until it would be delivered. The salesperson set the expectation at a maximum of 3 weeks. Had they said it would be 8 weeks and it was delivered in 6 weeks then she would have been over the moon.

The second reason she was upset was that she was the one who had to make all of the contact with the store, despite them constantly promising to call. If they had contacted her throughout the process to advise where the order was up to then she wouldn’t have cancelled the order. She may not have been entirely happy with waiting but she would have known that the store cared about her and was continually following up with their supplier.

The moral to this story is simple, firstly we should always “under-promise and over-deliver” to our customers (back in my retail days if I knew I could deliver something on Thursday I would say tell a customer to expect it on Friday but I would endeavour to get it for them earlier if possible – imagine their excitement when it arrived a day early – that certainly built my customer base). Secondly, it is essential that you keep in contact with your customers throughout the sale so that they are under no misconceptions that you know exactly where their order is at, obviously because you care about them.