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Sometimes companies can be fearful of talking about a topic like satisfaction guarantees for a couple of reasons. One is because if someone is not satisfied, we have to take ownership of our mistake, and that doesn’t always feel very good. Another reason is because we can be fearful of people taking advantage of a company’s guarantee.
Our satisfaction guarantee is there to remove the risk of people doing business with us. If we offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee, there’s zero risk in choosing us. We’re a team of humans, so we’re imperfect and we do mess up sometimes. As we’ve always learned, the main thing isn’t the adversity itself—it’s how you respond to it that really matters. We’ll do what we need to in order to resolve any concerns.
In my experience, I’ve found that people don’t want to take advantage of you. It turns out that clients are truly concerned that we’ve done something wrong and we need to take ownership of it. For example, we deal with excavation and sometimes rainstorms will cause mud to run somewhere it’s not supposed to be. We try to answer those concerns and get them resolved promptly, but it can be very difficult when working with Mother Nature. Because the client’s satisfaction is very important to us, we try do do whatever we can to resolve the situation.
Not too long ago, we had a job where we were busting up the concrete in a home. We have a process to keep the dust level down, but unfortunately, we dropped the ball in that area and there was a dust issue in the home. We fielded the customer’s concern, addressed the issue, and got the area cleaned up. We did what we needed to do in order to leave the customer satisfied.
I’m working on a situation right now because we subcontracted a pipe lining company from eastern Virginia to line a sewer 12 years ago. We applied the appropriate warranty to the lining, which was 50 years. Unfortunately, the subcontractor isn’t standing behind the work they did. So we are standing behind it. The bottom line is, when I look at the quote that was given to the customer, it clearly and simply states the work done and the warranty we provided. It’s costing us a great deal of money now, but I was personally in that client’s home and I said we would do the right thing to resolve her concern.
The customer agreed to work with us because they had confidence that the problem would be resolved and wouldn’t come up again in the future. Even 12 years later we’re still making sure our commitment is being honored. Sometimes an issue isn’t really resolved and we have to do extra work at our own expense. We must make the choice to do the right thing, even though it might not always be very fun.
If you have any questions, contact us today or give us a call at 540-483-9382.