Here’s a true story about a business that forgot why they were in business.  Not only did they treat their customers badly, but they also did lousy work.  O for 2.  The example outlined below is a service business, but the lessons can be applied to any business.  Here’s what they did wrong.

Lack of Clarity

First, there was a lack of clarity.  The owner of the business struggled to give the customers an accurate quote for the work to be performed.  Upfront pricing with clear policies reduces stress levels and eliminates any confusion from either the customers or the business.  If you don’t know what you charge, how would the customers know?

Once a price is established, then the customer needs a clear contract for the work to be performed.  This business did not provide that, forcing the customer to contact the owner multiple times to correct mistakes on the work estimate.  The business never had the customer sign a contract, but each version of the work estimate contained major errors relating to start dates, end dates, costs, scope of the project, and more.  If you have a conversation with a customer, you need to write things down so that the customer does not have to constantly correct you.  How can a customer trust you if you never remember what they said?  It raises doubt about the quality of your work if you can’t even remember what work you’ve agreed to do.

The customers in this story decided to give the business the benefit of the doubt with the lack of clarity as the owner was dealing with some personal issues.  However, if the owner couldn’t handle the job, he should have never agreed to take on the work.  Customers will not know if you are overwhelmed with personal stuff or out of your league regarding the work.  You, as a business owner, need to be honest with them regarding whether you can handle the job or not.

Don’t make customers work so hard to work with you.  They are hiring your business to do work that they don’t want to do themselves or can’t for whatever reason.  That is the point of businesses.  To do work for others.  Don’t give customers more work than they need.  They are hiring you to make their lives easier not harder.  Why would they give you money if it is just going to make their lives more difficult?  Why in the world would you expect them to give you money just to be frustrated by you?  That’s not how this works.  That’s not how any of this works.

Providing Terrible Service or Products

It’s bad enough as a business owner to provide a customer with terrible product, but it’s worse to lie about it.  If your product or service has physical evidence of what it or you did (or didn’t do) – why do you think you can lie about it?  The customer probably has pictures!  The customer most likely has evidence that you did not do what you agreed to do, or that your work caused damage to their property, or whatever it is.  If you’re a personal trainer and your client gets injured outside of your sessions, it may be difficult to prove if it was your session that led to the injury. 

However, if you’re a cabinet maker and the cabinet doesn’t look like a cabinet, why do you think that you can lie about it?  Also, if you destroyed the kitchen wall as you installed said “cabinet,” why would you think that is ok?  It’s not ok to damage customers’ property as you provide the service, giving the customer more costs than they would have had if they had not hired you.  If they had known that they would spend weeks of time and thousands of dollars repairing the damage that your company caused, they would never have hired you in the first place.  You think that was the risk the customer took?  No.  They had every right to assume that you would come in to do the work agreed upon and not damage other things.  They also had the right to assume that you would take responsibility for the damage you caused and not lie about it.  The damage should never have happened, and the company should never have lied about it.

If you own a business, you are responsible for its actions.  You are accountable.  There’s no way around this.  This is what you signed up for when you decided to run a business.  You don’t get to pick and choose what you are accountable for.  You are accountable for providing a good product or service.  You are required to be honest with customers.  You cannot lie to get out of doing things or paying for damage you caused just because you don’t feel like it.  That’s not how it works.  That’s not how any of this works.

Acting as if the Customer is the One with a Problem

Continuing with the story, this particular business owner not only lied about the events, which were documented with pictures and witnesses, but then acted as though the customer was being unreasonable.  This is wrong on a few levels.

Behaving as if the customer is overreacting never solves the problem.  The customer has a problem and gaslighting them is never going to fix the issue.  If a customer has a problem, it is the business’ responsibility to fix it.  The business should not sweep it under the carpet or tell the customer that they are overreacting.  Even if they are overreacting, that’s not your concern.  As a business owner, it’s your job to fix the situation, not make a commentary on it.  If they are not overreacting and there is a legitimate problem, such as in this example, telling them that the sky isn’t blue doesn’t make the problem go away.  If anything, it makes it worse.

It shows that you don’t care and aren’t interested in fixing the problem.  That attitude is not going to get you anywhere.  If the customer realizes that you aren’t going to take actions to solve the issue, then they will be forced to go somewhere else to have their problem fixed.  That’s how it works.  Don’t like that the customer will seek outside methods, such as lawyers, media, etc.?  Then don’t force them to take those measures.

If you screw up, then it is your fault.  You need to own up to it.  You need to make amends.  The customer doesn’t need to do anything.  It’s you that has work to do.  They entered into the customer/business relationship in good faith.  If your business did not deliver or caused a new problem, then you need to do something about it.  The customer is not responsible for fixing the problem you caused.  Why would you expect a customer to pay for your mistakes?  You advertised yourself as an expert.  They hired someone who claimed to be an expert not an intern.  You need to pay for your mistakes, both financially and timewise, just like anyone else.  Your name is on the door – that doesn’t mean that you get to do whatever you want, it means that you are ultimately responsible for providing the advertised services or products.

Hoping That an Unhappy Customer Will Go Away

You may think that once an unhappy customer goes away (because eventually they will get tired of trying to hold you accountable, right?), that your problems are done, but you’d be wrong.  You may think that if they’ve gone quiet that you’ve won, but you haven’t.  Customers will generally forget what they’ve paid, but they will never forget that you took advantage of them.  It will come up in conversations, that they have with people who would have never become your customers, but also with people who might have been.  Reputation is everything for a business, from a sole proprietorship to a large corporation.  Once you lose it, it’s gone.  Or very difficult to get back.  Every action and conversation either support or destroy it.  If you take advantage of a customer – by providing poor products, poor service, lying to them, damaging their property, or some other terrible thing – they will remember.  The slate is never wiped clean unless you take responsibility for your actions.  Unless you fix the problem, by taking accountability and taking actions that work towards solving the issue rather than creating new ones, the slate will never be clean.  Reputations are everything for a business.  A business owner shouldn’t be so cavalier about it unless it is ready to deal with the consequences.