Disclaimer, this is my opinion and has absolutely nothing to do with Colorado Springs Real Estate. 🙂
I’ve recently started to notice a trend with companies that (probably) contrary to most people’s view quite frankly annoys me; the tendency I’m seeing for companies to over deliver.
Over deliver? But Pete, how can that be bad? You ask. Well, obviously there is nothing wrong with exceeding client/customer expectations. It’s a surefire way to success and a convention that I strive to achieve with my clients. What my gripe is with is blatant under promising.
Let me give you a couple examples and how they negatively affected my wife and I:
Recently my wife bought a new pair of hiking boots from Merrill which promptly ripped on our first outing due to manufacturer defect. Unable to return them to the store, we were forced to return them to the manufacturer. They claimed it would take 4 weeks to get us a new pair. The result; we went and bought her new hiking boots because she couldn’t be without boots for 4 weeks. The boots showed up less than a week later. Great, right? Wrong. We already bought and used the new boots…so now we have two pair.
Another instance is we just purchased a cellphone case on line from Otterbox for my wife’s new iPhone. We wanted this case because it is known as the best choice for people that have a tendency to have the “dropsies” (which if you know my wife will understand) and with how much those phones cost we didn’t want to skimp. We were told 7-10 days and it came in 3. Thank goodness we hadn’t gotten around to buying her a temporary case…which we had planned to do and that would have unnecessarily cost us more.
In another example I bought a Dell computer that showed up on my door before I even got a shipping notification?? What if I had been out of town and not here to receive it? (For those of you that know me know how likely that could have been.)
In all instances, the companies far exceeded my expectations which you would think is wonderful. However, by under promising, they are inadvertently forcing us to make alternative arrangements that can have negative unintended consequences. My challenge to companies out there is this…BE HONEST. Tell me “Hey, we typically can get this to you in 3 days” or 7 days or whatever and then just disclaim that in some circumstances it can take longer. Then the second step is to keep me informed. If it slips for one reason or another, no sweat…just let me know (and give me a real reason like; “Our shipment of RAM didn’t come in” or “we’re really sorry, we lost the order in processing”, or “we just don’t have the manpower to keep up with demand right now”) Don’t just give me a blanket all encompassing “4 Weeks for delivery”.
That’s just my 2 cents.