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Hurricane Debbie deposited 17 inches of water throughout my Florida home. It’s a total loss. We have gutted the house and thrown out the furniture. The experience has reminded me of the importance of treating distressed customers with extra care.
Some of my distress is because the flood happened, but a whole lot more of it is that I don’t have flood insurance. Before you jump to conclusions, I was not in a flood zone, nor had I experienced flooding before in the 15 years I lived there. Nevertheless, it flooded, and the rebuild will come directly from my pocket.
However, the purpose of the newsletter today is not to gain your sympathy. The ordeal can also be an excellent learning experience for us all regarding Customer Experience.
The Value of Recommendation
Once you get over the horror of a flood invading your home, you realize your situation: you need help fixing this, and only a few people can. However, I didn’t know who to call.
So, I phoned a friend. They recommended Servpro, and we called them right away. Servpro is a disaster cleanup company. Responding to situations like mine is what they do.
One negative part of the experience with Servpro was their use of the word demolition. They used it to describe their service, but the word upset my wife, Lorraine.
Moreover, when the demolition started, it went fast, upsetting Lorraine. All the activities from the team of 12 people tearing through her house, dumping all of her furniture in the bin, and ripping out the drywall at least four feet up was very difficult for her.
So, was that their fault? Not necessarily. The situation was upsetting no matter what speed they performed it. However, since being upset about the problem is a customer emotion, it was an opportunity for them.
As I review my summary about what happened, it sounds like I was annoyed with how they handled our case, but that isn’t true. They did an excellent job and were understanding and professional. In particular, I appreciate how they were sympathetic to our situation and genuine with us.
Now, Take the Cable Company…Please?
For all the wonderful service we had from Servpro, we got our dose of disappointment with the cable company. I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, they don’t do well on a regular Tuesday, so what did I expect would change during a natural disaster?
The flood ruined the house and took out the electricity. But the worst part was the loss of the Internet. (Just kidding…wondering where the alligator was that hung about the grounds nearby…definitely worse.)
During the flood, I got all the modems and everything related to the Internet above the water line. Once I could, I phoned the cable company to get access again. As you can guess, this call didn’t transpire without a few bumps.
I was 30 minutes into a phone call going through their various tests when they asked if I could get a screwdriver to open the cable box outside and see if the power was running. I was annoyed because I told them already that I had 17 inches of water in the house, and now they want me to find my tools, go outside, and risk electrocution (not really, but hyperbole is the foundation of my humor regarding the cable company) to check the bloody box.
To be fair, the cable company came and fixed the issue. That wasn’t my problem with them in this interaction. The person they sent was helpful and sympathetic, telling me he understood what I was going through, having been through floods himself, which made me feel better about the whole thing. Believe it or not, it was a moment of positive experience with the cable company.
All this to say, it wasn’t the person who came to my house that bothered me. It wasn’t even the person on the other end of my first and second calls to the cable company during the flood event. It was the lack of consideration for my predicament.
I wish the cable company allowed their employees some leeway to empower them in situations like mine. I don’t think they have it. The process is the problem.
I’d Like a Latte with Two Pumps of Empathy, Please.
After a couple of days, we found a place to stay with friends and decided to get a coffee and breathe for a minute. So, we went to a nearby coffee chain.
Everyone at this store was cheerful. It was annoying. As we were paying, the front-line employee asked if we had had a good day. We explained that we hadn’t, as we had just experienced our first flood. We thought we would get an empathetic response.
We didn’t. She said something to the effect, “Oh, that’s a shame. That’ll be $20.” Not even a pretense of empathy.
By contrast, some of the companies we spoke with were very empathetic. Their sympathy was what we wanted, an acknowledgment that the house had flooded and that it stunk for us right now.
To be fair to the front-line employees, the coffee chain isn’t a disaster recovery company. Servpro knows how to respond to information like ours because everyone who calls them has just experienced a disaster. Responding with empathy and concern about it is second nature in situations like that when companies are customer centered.
Also, in the coffee chain employee’s defense, there is a cheerfulness culture in customer experiences like that. We almost expect people to smile at us all the time on both sides of the counter. So, encountering a response like ours was something the employee either didn’t remember or was a scenario the company never addressed in her training.
Moreover, some of this is on me. Hurricane Debbie turned our lives upside down, but it didn’t do the same to everybody else. Here, not more than a mile away, everyone was carrying on business as usual. It was a very strange experience for me and more than a little frustrating to feel so unlucky.
Vacancy, Yes. Contingency Plan, Not So Much.
We realized we needed storage once we determined what we would keep from the house after the flood. But guess what? So did everyone else. We decided to secure ours right away.
I chose a place not too far away. When I went to it, there was no receptionist. Essentially, you are greeted with a tablet, where you book your storage online. You could talk to someone, but it would be a video conference on the tablet.
This virtual experience with a tablet receptionist was not ideal, especially if, like me, you had never been to a storage place. I received two codes, but I didn’t know where they went. When I went to the gate, I saw nothing to input codes. After figuring the gate part out and getting up to the storage area, I couldn’t open the door. My only recourse was to text someone and wait for help.
Now, part of me was frustrated by the flood, and another part was about the codes and the bloody door, but a third part of me was frustrated by the lack of preparation by the storage company. When a hurricane hits a neighborhood, the demand for storage increases exponentially. Why didn’t the storage company prepare? It’s one thing if you are a storage company elsewhere, but if you are one in Florida, it is a sure bet you will need a contingency plan for Hurricane Season.
So, What Should We Learn From My Flood Experience?
One of the big takeaways any company can have regarding my experience is that empathy is key. People need acknowledgment that something terrible happened to them. They also need a little more sympathy than usual, whether you are serving them a latte or throwing out their favorite rug they bought on that once-in-a-lifetime trip to Africa.
Therefore, organizations should consider whether the company should be prepared for extraordinary events regarding training and processes. Too many are like the storage company that have an experience that works for them most of the time and in the best of circumstances. The storage company could have given new and distressed customers a better experience than a virtual or digital one, and perhaps converted me to a lifetime customer. Instead, I’m annoyed and at least two other people left while I signed up because the process was such a mess.
People always need empathy, but even more so at times like these. So, do you have flexibility built into the process to handle these extraordinary events? To be fair, flexibility is a good thing to have every day regarding Customer Experience, but it is essential at times like these.
We are going to rebuild the house, and also recognize we are fortunate to be able to do so. It will take some time, but eventually, we will have everything sorted. The memory of the ordeal will remain with us, as will the memory of which companies took care of us in our time of need.
However, and perhaps more importantly, we will also remember who didn’t. On which list would you want your organization to be?
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