Remember The Office episode with Dwight yelling at Michael that if he turned right he’d end up in a lake? Michael turned right anyway, because that is where his GPS led him — and they returned to the office dripping wet and car-less. Unfortunately, this is a universal scene and I’m sure you have a similar experience.
Ours happened when we printed map quest directions to a hotel in Memphis. For over 500 miles those directions were great and we confidently followed every turn. Until less than 1/4 mile of our destination and the last turn was to be a left. Left actually felt wrong, looked wrong, and it was wrong. We ended up at the gates of a large prison!
Customer relationships are often like map quest directions. It’s a long journey to get to a common destination with many turns. It’s pretty easy to start well and to let the rest of the relationship ride off the beginning. Or, to work hard at establishing good service and rapport through many days and project variations, and then grow careless about watching for wrong turns.
The truth is that customer outlook for a company includes the entire team for the complete journey. It’s about anticipating the beginning, the additional helps in the middle, and the turns where focus can be lost and the customer goes the wrong direction. When a team is committed to customer service, the client is given all the right turns.
It’s funny, we’ve never trusted map quest quite the same way. We never remember the convience of having printed directions to follow for our trip to Memphis. We never remember the accuracy of the directions that got us within 1/4 mile of our goal. Instead, we still remember the wrong turn that left us at the prison.
