Is Service in Season?

by Elizabeth Frederick

Those of you in the Northeast know we’ve been having a heat wave for the past few weeks.  Last week was the worst yet in New York – it topped 100° three days in a row.  On the hottest day of the week, Charles was visiting a friend.  His air conditioner had stopped working, and he had placed a call the previous day to schedule a repair.  After waiting on hold for 15 minutes, the technician was scheduled to arrive the following day between 2 and 8.

Charles met his friend at 6, and the technician still hadn’t arrived.  They sat and waited, and at 7 his friend called the service company to confirm his appointment.  After waiting on hold again, he was told the technician would arrive by 8.

At 8:30, the technician still hadn’t come.  He placed another call, waited on hold again, and was then told his appointment had been rescheduled to the following day.

Now this situation would have been annoying anytime, but on a day that hit 104°, it was unacceptable.

Charles shared this story and it made me think.  We’ve been focusing on customer service this month, and something I don’t often hear discussed is that service can be seasonal.

Think about it – you expect a repair appointment with the cable company to be difficult to schedule, and you’re not necessarily surprised if the technician doesn’t show up on time.  If you called the day before your Super Bowl party, though, you’d hope for better service.

The retail industry is a great example.  In preparation for the holiday shopping rush, retail employers typically increase their workforce by at least 4%.  They could maintain their pre-holiday employment numbers and force customers to deal with longer lines, but they’ve made the conscious decision to spend the money to ensure a more pleasant shopping experience.

Many businesses don’t really think of themselves as seasonal, but if you take a step back you can see situations in which it might make sense to place a higher emphasis than usual on customer service.

If you recently experienced a product failure, you might want to hire extra customer service reps to handle the additional calls – the last thing upset customers want is a longer hold time.  If a competitor is slashing prices, you could offer free samples, friendly and efficient reps, and faster shipping to compete.  If you’re struggling in sales and every deal counts, it might help to train your sales team to improve communication and response times.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t always strive for excellent customer service, but some situations require additional focus.  Are you ensuring that service is in season?