Clean your dirty dishes! Interoperability, communication and customer satisfaction.

Every day there’s a scenario that plays out at my office. I go to the kitchen to get my coffee from our run-of-the-mill coffee maker. We don’t have one of those Keurig machines with a water line connection. The reservoir is always empty, so I have to add water. I take the reservoir off the machine and go to the water faucet. I then find that the sink is full of dishes. I can’t get the reservoir in the sink to fill it with water. This is what you might call one of my pet peeves.

At home I’m happy to be the dish washer. I find it therapeutic in a masochistic sort of way, but only at home. I don’t go to work to wash other peoples’ dishes! Most of the time I get the excuse that they’re letting the dishes “soak.” “Soaking” is just another form of procrastination.

Procrastination has its consequences in life and business, especially in the service and support industry. If you want to excel as a service and support company, some things are imperative. Most of them, besides delivering what you promised, are all centered around communication.

Tell the customer what you are going to do, when you are going to do it, the status of said thing to be done, and so on. Communicate when it is done and any issues, potential issues, and possible resolutions if they are necessary. Don’t get me wrong, this goes both ways. But communication from the service provider to the customer is always required. That is what the service provider is getting paid to do. It is the minimum amount of work to be done.

We find this especially in integration projects. Last year we were hired to provide the testing for an interface between a hospital lab system and practice EMR for billing. They had been working on this project for some time and we were brought in for testing towards the tail end of the project. While going through our testing plan we found that not all of the business scenarios were properly supported by the interface.

Once we identified this, we immediately notified the project team and sponsors concerning the issue. We then started working with the vendors on both sides of the interface to determine how this could be resolved. Once we had detail regarding the issue and options for resolution, we escalated the decision to the project sponsors to make the decision. The project sponsors were very appreciative of the regular communication and updates concerning the outstanding issues.

If you postpone (procrastinate) communication to a customer, you are not providing the best service and support possible. There are some situations where you might not want to give all of the information. Sometimes you don’t have the whole story. But you must let the customer to know that you are still working on the issue for them.

Lack of communication just leads to the customer making their own assumptions. Those assumptions over a period of time lead them to conclude that the service provider is not going to help them. Naturally, they start looking for someone who will service them better.

When in doubt, communicate. Communicate your questions. Communicate your status. Don’t procrastinate. Communicate.

Don’t get me started on the bathroom….