A chunk of my time lately has been involved in a big move. Sara Grace and I are in the process of moving from the lovely tropical paradise of south Florida to the gorgeous and FRIENDLY North Carolina. If you have ever made any move much less a long haul or purchased a home, you know that it is a significant business transaction.
Over the last few weeks we have had some challenging dealings on the business side of our move/home purchase transaction. On the purchasing side of the fence, I can say that dealing with the previous home owner (seller) has been one of the worst business transactions I have ever been involved or exposed to. In the nature of the nuances I am going to be posting some blogs over the next few days on what I have learned and the advice I would give on a few things.
The home we purchased in North Carolina was owned by a relocation company (undecided if I am going to reveal names yet). On our particular deal they were immobile like a Buick with four flat tires. Here is one of the items that stung my biz mind:
They had a young girl (so they called her - already demeaning and blame placing) who was counseling with our Realtor on the deal. For the sake of this post, let's call her Janet. Janet was not getting things done in a timely manner whatsoever and it really caused a few issues. However, the relocation company (seller and employer of Janet) decided to place all the blame on Janet and eventually terminate her. Much to my frustration their response was, "Well we terminated Janet and that should help."
If things got better, I missed it. Things remained poor from their camp.
My advice:if you have an under performing employee who has been doing so poorly that you need to let them go, do not place the blame on them and commit that their discharge is going to make things better. You can avoid that pitfall by simple telling your clients: "We are sorry for the level of service you have received from US, from this point forward we are committed to improving your experience with us and resolving and challenges we may have created."
When your customer realizes they are no longer dealing with Janet, they will get the drift and logically reason that Janet either got moved over or moved out. You do not need to splash slime on Janet to your customer. It will take away from your brand and show ineffective biz etiquette from you.
In this stage of our process, while many were looking down on Janet, I was looking down on her employer. If this was a fender bender, they are at fault. The next time, they should rectify their poor service without bringing the customer into their details and MOVE ON with great service.
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