Time is precious, time is the fire in which we burn. So why do companies repeatedly waste our time and worse still why do we repeatedly give our business to companies that waste our time? We have all been there, we have been given a delivery date, maybe even a time slot if we are lucky. We book time off work or arrange for people to wait in our house for us, waiting patiently to take delivery of our new purchase.
This recently happened to my mum, she waited in all day for a washing machine. It didn’t turn up, calls were made, I waited 45 mins on hold and gave up, my mum waited 20 mins managed to speak to someone and got an apology. “This item is coming from the manufacturer direct Mrs Smith” sorry for the inconvenience. Why couldn’t they tell us this was coming direct from the manufacture in the first place? Where is the harm in that? I recently read that a plane was detained at Gatwick airport for 8 hours whilst another crew was found, to fly the plane on to Heathrow. The police were called as there was a risk of breach of the peace, but the passengers’ main complaint was they were not told what was happening.
This is a familiar tale of bad customer service, not bad communication. Someone knew what was happening and it was decided that the passengers or customers didn’t need to know.
So fast forward to a company who actually do a good job and really should promote themselves more. The Furniture Market™ they give you a 2 hour time slot, text you to confirm its convenient and go above and beyond to make sure that people get their furniture within their own self-imposed delivery targets. How many companies in this day and age deliver their own products, in their own vans, with their own drivers, and all within a 2 hour time slot? Not many.
If companies across the country did this think how many man hours would be saved to the economy? Is it that hard to offer good customer service in this day and age? It seems that there is at least one company out there who are trying their best.
